HIGH UP IN THE TREES

Lottie. Leap.

In visual summation. Green new-shoot summer.

{Because. Blue.}


{Post yoga class, mountain dog variation.}


{Measurements have been taken and checked twice for good measure. (@pasadenamansions is knitting dear Lots a jumper for the winter, and it has already been the subject of a daily drawing.)}


{'Look out now, Five! Don't go splashing paint over me like that!' Painting white roses red on the Queen's Croquet-Ground. (Taking the longer route homeward with Lottie since always.) }


{Once upon a time, to paraphrase Jazmina Cininas, we entered Castle Counihan and considered unfurling our wings in the beautiful works of Deborah Klein. (Standing between Cotton Harlequin Bug Woman (2014) and Splendid emerald Wasp Woman (2015) by Deborah Klein, exhibited as part of Modern Myth, curated by Domenica Vavala, at Counihan Gallery until the 6th of March. Congratulations Deborah, Paul, and Jazmina. Exquisite works!)}


{In echo of ol' Perce, on the edge, flouting the rules.}


{From Milly to museum, showing Lottie about the traps.}


{Tightrope. Frank. (We've been here before. I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX. Patterns, like grid, sucker for 'em.)}


{Lenni showing Lottie how to garden. (Little Lottie Long Legs is from Mildura, like Perce. She was rescued by Starting Over Dog Rescue, and they believe she is two-years-old. She had overgrown claws, and she needed to be treated for bush tics and fleas, microchipped, vaccinated, wormed, and desexed. She's fallen on her (long) feet.}


{For Animal Instinct, we have created four costumed Salvaged Relatives on cartes de visite (by me) paired with drawings (by Louise) of the same collage element in a new and arguably more natural setting. Like this one, In the borrowed evening jacket inspired by the heavens, designed by Elsa Schiaparelli, c. 1937, with an American bittern (Botaurus lentiginosus) paired with Closer to natural (American bittern (Botaurus lentiginosus)). (Animal Instinct at Metropolis Gallery from the 5th of March.)}


{Never met a grid I didn't like.}


{Impromptu training session with Miss Long Legs. (Take II. Because it is all about the pattern. Always.)}

The last day of summer. Leap! Time, just enough, to introduce you, officially, that is, to Lottie Long Legs, the newest charm-rolled addition to our menagerie. Adopted three weeks ago now through Starting Over Dog Rescue, Lottie is a Jack Russell on elegant pins. Part Italian Greyhound and all adorable, when carried in your arms, the look of Lady Di. I'm not half smitten, I grant you.

Asta, we're one step closer to your talents. Contentment, she wears long legs.

(For more, you know where to find it.)

 

A video posted by Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison (@gracialouise) on Feb 18, 2016 at 9:05pm PST

{Lottie and Lenni, shootin' the breeze.}

+ For those of you who couldn't make it along to the Sticky Institute zine fair, please allow us to bring our stall to you. We've three new zines to share, and all are available through our online store for gold coins' song. What's more, from now until Sunday the 6th of March we are offering FREE POSTAGE on all orders over $10 (AUD) when you enter the code 'freepost' upon checkout.

+ It's going to be great, Louise! XO

+ Dogs on laps I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, and VIII. (A just for kicks (or rather, tails, snouts, chew toys) collection, with more to come, naturally.)
+ When Percy met Lottie. (Thank-you Inez. Your drawings, always a delight.)
+ Inside the front fence post. Beloved Omar 9th May 2014. Beloved Percy 4th January 2016.

On stage, as in laboratory.

{Stephanie Lake's Double Blind (Image credit: Pippa Samaya)}

Charged, my response to Stephanie Lake's new work, especially for Fjord Review. (As always, thank-you Penelope.)

Double Blind
Stephanie Lake Company

Choreographer: Stephanie Lake
Dancers: Alisdair Macindoe, Amber Haines, Kyle Page and Alana Everett
Composer: Robin Fox
Lighting Designer: Bosco Shaw

Northcote Town Hall
Monday 15^th February, 2016

"Please continue."
"The experiment requires that you continue."
"It is absolutely essential that you continue."
"You must go on, there is no other choice!"[i]

Stanley Milgram framed his notorious social experiment of subservience as an inquiry into the Holocaust. Building on Solomon Asch’s conformity experiments of 1951, Milgram’s own 'obedience studies,' which began in the early sixties, can be seen to demonstrate the banality of evil in a controlled environment, in a laboratory, in life.

The dark heart of the human animal, ripe for translation both direct and indirect, the Milgrim paradigm has since made countless appearances in literature (Bernhard Schlink’s The Reader), and film, Henri Verneul's I as in Icarus and Paul Scheuring's The Experiment, to name a few, and now dance, in Stephanie’s Lake’s new work, Double Blind. Fresh from its Sydney Festival premiere at Carriageworks, Double Blind explores internal and external conflict, action and reaction, cause and effect, through a series of its own choreographed behavioural experiments. On stage, as in laboratory, roughhouse quickly gave over to cruelty and torture. Whether "seduced by the trappings of authority, by the control of their perceptions”[ii] or driven by fear: "how far can [one] be pushed to act outside of one’s moral code when instructed?" Lake asks. In a sixty-minute performance, it transpired, quite a bit.

Lake has freely drawn upon the psychological experiments of Milgram, but perhaps also upon the sense of theatre within his experiments. “Milgram was a fantastic dramaturg. His studies are fantastic little pieces of theater. They're beautifully scripted.” [iii] The Milgram Experiment could almost be said to have been in play before the work began. As I waited near to the front of the queue, the usher (read: person in authority) informed the crowd (read: willing subjects gathered to see Lake’s new daring) to fill the theatre from the back rows downwards, thereby leaving the best seats for the last in line. A technique favoured by ushers because it is easier to manage naturally makes early birds bristle as perceived stragglers receive premium seats, front and centre. I found myself heading to the back of the venue before realising I could rebel, in part, and sit in the middle, albeit to the far end of the row.

Asked to look closer at our own animal instincts, Double Blind was an uncomfortable and powerful work. If you want to understand the human animal, sit back, prod it, and watch. Grim and episodic, as befits a series of experiments, I played the alternating role assigned to me of 'passive observer' and 'active participant.' In a work, like the experiments, that felt geared to evoke a specific response, I, too, was manipulated to administer electric shocks to another out of a sense of obligation. Yes, in order for an electric current to flow, the circuit needed to be completed. With audio-visual artist, Robin Fox, behind the console on the sidelines, a lab coat and black frames suggested by his impassive face, a gritty, disquieting subject was charged by and revealed in the frenetic movements of four dancers.

Alisdair Macindoe and Alana Everett, Amber Haines and Kyle Page alternated between being experimented on and being those in charge, an extension of the definition of ‘double-blind.’ With the ringing of a boxer's bell, following voice commands, they alternated between playing sated or hungry rats competing with one another for air, water, food, shelter, space; survival, in short. They lurched from defensive to aggressive. Revealing their backs in echo of the vulnerability of a blue hospital smock in costumes designed by Harriet Oxley, each one was a conduit for electrical charge. At times they moved like machinery parts, both in terms of the precision demanded and without fluidity of joint. Fox's compositional audio barrage enhanced the effect. The clunk-clunk of the cogs and the hissing of the pistons, the ticking of a human motor not quite working in time with the current was made audible and then some.

Lake has replicated ideas behind the Milgram experiment with its snaking red and blue electric cables, but in a broad and visual sense, and in doing so, other psychological experiments were referenced. We also learnt that the human form, once hooked into the amplifier, is a noisy beast; a tap-tap on the shoulder of another sounds like a jackhammer. Clipboard in hand, in this session, where you stood ethically was also pulled from the recesses. In keeping the work open to interpretation, but precise in its choreographic execution, for me, a wealth of imagery, from the twisted surgical experiments of Vladimir Demikhov’s two-headed dogs to the deprivation of Harry F. Harlow's tragic monkeys isolated within steel 'pits of despair', leapt to mind. Thanks to the subterranean lighting of Bosco Shaw, pit ponies and canaries in a coalmine also got a look in. Bedded in a viscous sludge was every bit as alienating as the white noise confines of a sterile laboratory.

And it was this hideous and macabre imagery that Lake’s choreography hauled from the dark cavity as Haines appeared in a second position plié over a kneeling Macindoe. Her elbow upon his head, they moved as a surgically grafted Cerberus[iv]. Operating like an inkblot to interpret, this 'wrong' cohesiveness, this mutant form soon shifted. Haines appeared as controller over Macindoe, where she willed him to move, he followed suit. Before again, in role reversal, he donned a laboratory assistant’s rubber glove and appeared to ‘blow’ into her forearm.

Shadowing the metronome sequence between Everett as the friendly controller issuing prompts to continue and Macindoe in an initially comic, but increasingly frantic bid to keep up, I saw the movements of a baby monkey released from an isolation chamber in Macindoe's arm held up in right angle to his head almost as if cradling himself. One brief but recurring action read as an echo of the repetitive gestures of a monkey, a nervous tic of detachment from the self and others.

In such a landscape, it was not unusual for all manner of unfixed imagery to collide. The power of suggestion! To me, coupled with its intensity, this was one of the work's strengths. It made you think about all manner of things, and most of them were deeply unpleasant. This manipulation was many. People will do awful things if asked to by a person in authority. Compliance then and in Lake’s hands now, brutal.

As sound and movement was passed from one dancer to another—or was that electrical current?—the effect was often beautiful. And genuinely humorous, like the nose-to-nose pecking from Everett to Page to Macindoe, who in order to peck the shorter Haines, compressed his form by bending his knees before shuffling forward to touch her nose. Back and forth, in a line, a movement, a charge, it was passed. And a little faith restored in humanity.

The work is tight, the references many, and the effect: devastating.

Notes:
[i] Instructions issued to the participants of the experiment (until they rebelled) to increase the electric charge in increments from 15 volts (slight shock) to 450 volts (XXX). Stanley Milgram, 'Behavioural Study of Obedience,' Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, Vol. 67 (4), October 1963, pp. 371–378
[ii] Stanley Milgram, Obedience to Authority: an Experimental View, New York: Harper and Row, 1974, p. 123
[iii] Stephen Reicher, quoted by Cari Romm, 'Rethinking One of Psychology's Most Infamous Experiments,' The Atlantic, 28th  January, 2015
[iv] In 1954, on the outskirts of Moscow, Demikhov, in a bid to create a single circulation of two forms, surgically grafted the head, shoulders, and front legs of a two-month-old puppy onto the neck of an adult dog. As the puppy drank milk, it dribbled out the unconnected stump of its oesophagus. Of the 20 hybrids, the longest survived for 28 days.

+ Earlier pieces for Fjord Review

Stickier, stickiest, stickiness.

{(Signing one hundred copies of) You and Me.}


{Louise's beautiful and poignant, A Company of Parrots, is finally released.}


{Salvaged Relatives in Seven Costumes (being editioned).}

Thank-you to everyone who swung by our stall at Sticky Institute's annual zine fair as part of their Festival of the Photocopier. It's always lovely to catch up with familiar dear ones and meet new faces too. We feel very lucky to have your friendship and support. That you came with chocolate frogs, rose drops, knitted hearts, and vim, an added bonus. Big thanks and love to all the clever, tireless, and dedicated folk at Sticky Institute. An always, always seamless and swell, chiefly toasty, and merry charged atmosphere makes it a pleasure. We're looking forward to next year's, and all else in between.

And for those of you who couldn't make it along to the Melbourne Town Hall, our three latest zines, two of which were made especially for the fair, are now available through our online store for gold coins' song.

You and Me
Gracia Haby and Louise Jennison
$6 (AUD)

A Company of Parrots
Louise Jennison
$2 (AUD)

Salvaged Relatives in Seven Costumes
Gracia Haby
$3 (AUD)




















{From preparation and those 11.58am final tweaks to full swing, it looked something like this. Brilliant! (Thanks to Shane Jones for the photos of the two of us making our right angles look 'relaxed' before noon tee off, and my Mum, @pasadenamansions, for the over-the-balcony peep. Deborah Klein and Shane, we loved being stall chums. Let's do it again!)}

+ The fair, illustrated.

Playing favourites.

{Salvaged Relatives in Seven Costumes, a new zine for 2016.}

Alongside earlier titles, this Sunday, we'll have three new zines on our table as part of Sticky Institute's annual Zine Fair at the Melbourne Town Hall. One, a splendid pocket-sized parrot zine by Louise from the feathered-tail end of last year, which we never quite made it around to releasing into the wild; another, a collaborative zine, featuring the a quartet of Louise's drawings in response to a suite of cartes de visite collages (created as part of the group exhibition, Animal Instinct); and the third, a small zine of costumed unknowns selected primarily because they are, for varied reasons, my favourites.

Salvaged Relatives in Seven Costumes is an edition of 100, and it will be available at the fair for $3.00.

After the fair, all three titles will be available through our online store.


{In the borrowed costume from Petrouchka, designed by Alexandre Benois, c 1911, with a Burrowing owl (Speotyto cunicularia).}}


{In the borrowed costume for a Little God from Le Dieu bleu, after Léon Bakst, 1912, with an Eastern collared lizard (Crotaphytus collaris).}


{In the borrowed costume for a Young Man from The Rite of Spring, after Nicholas Roerich, 1913, with a Great horned owl (Bubo virginianus).}


{In the borrowed costume worn by Fyodor Chaliapin in the Coronation Scene from Boris Godunov for Diaghilev’s Saison Russes, after Alekandr Golovin, c 1908, with a Western tarsier (Tarsius bancanus).}


{In the borrowed costume from The Sleeping Princess, c. 1921, designed by Léon Bakst, with a an Indri (Indri indri) and a Leopard cat (Prionailurus bengalensis).}


{In the borrowed costume for Vaslav Nijinsky as the Prince from the pas de deux L’Oiseau et la Prince, after Léon Bakst, 1914, with a Northern cricket frog (Acris crepitans).}


{With a Russian (Vladimir) doll from the second half of the 18th century's headpiece of glass, pearls, linen, cotton and wood. (A #SalvagedRelatives collage on a carte de visite, with an accomplished climber, the Slow loris.)}

Sticky Institute presents
Festival of the Photocopier Zine Fair
Melbourne Town Hall
Sunday 14th of February
From 12 noon to 5 pm

See you there!



+ Roughly this time last year...

+ 2015
+ 2014 (take II)
+ 2013
+ 2011
+ 2010
+ 2008

Paired.

{The upside-down Three-toed sloth (Bradypus variegatus) receives his final strokes.}


{One collaged creature drawn in a more natural environment.}


{Wet day: stars complete.}


{Thursday's quartet. On violin times two, the American bittern (Botaurus lentiginosus) and Golden angwantibo (Arctocebus aureus), on cello, the Three-toed sloth (Bradypus variegatus), and on the viola, Franquet's epauletted fruit bat (Epomops franqueti).}

Following on from our recent artists' book, A deck of Salvaged Relatives, and especially for a forthcoming group exhibition, Animal Instinct, Louise and I have created four new works comprised of pairs.

Four of my original Salvaged Relatives collages on cartes de viste have been paired with Louise's delicate drawings of the same collaged element in a new and arguably more natural setting. Think: parrots in trees instead of perched upon costumed shoulders. A fruit bat is released from the thankless role of headwear in Cléopâtre. A Three-toed sloth dances in Carnival before returning to its natural habitat. Or is that the other way around? A Golden angwantibo climbs from wilderness and hunkers down within a stage fantasy. Either way, together, these two works become one piece, like two puzzle pieces revealing more of the one tale.

It is something, this back and forth notion, we are toying with more and more — a collage in response to a print, a drawing in response to a collage — and we like the ground it is revealing as our collaboration evolves.

In the borrowed evening jacket inspired by the heavens, designed by Elsa Schiaparelli, c. 1937, with an American bittern (Botaurus lentiginosus)
and
Closer to natural (American bittern (Botaurus lentiginosus))


In the borrowed jacket from The hunt, Act I, Giselle, designed by Alexandre Benois, c. 1910, with a Golden angwantibo (Arctocebus aureus)
and
Closer to natural (Golden angwantibo (Arctocebus aureus))


Closer to natural (Three-toed sloth (Bradypus variegatus))
and
In a borrowed costume for Columbine from Carnival, designed by Léon Bakst, c. 1942, with a Three-toed sloth (Bradypus variegatus)


Closer to natural (Franquet's epauletted fruit bat (Epomops franqueti))
and
In the borrowed costume for a Greek from Cléopâtre, designed by Léon Bakst, c. 1909, with a Franquet's epauletted fruit bat (Epomops franqueti)

You will be able to see these works in person in March as part of Animal Instinct.

Animal Instinct
Anita Barrett, Dean Bowen, Jazmina Cininas, Rona Green, Bridget Farmer, Lucy Hardie, Gracia Haby + Louise Jennison, Sheridan Jones, Kyoko Imazu, Adrian Lockhart, John Ryrie, Judi Singleton, Jess Szigethy-Gyula, Tjanpi Desert Weavers, Deborah Williams, Gail Willoughby

Metropolis Gallery
64 Ryrie Street, Geelong, Victoria

5th to 19th March

"Metropolis Gallery is excited to present Animal Instinct, an exhibition exploring how we view animals and at times appropriate their characteristics to make sense of the human species.

Since prehistoric times and throughout art history the animal has appeared in many guises in mythology and storytelling, and the attributes of animals have supplied artists with a wealth of inspiration and artistic metaphor. This exhibition will present diverse interpretations by a number of artists in a variety of mediums."

 

A video posted by Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison (@gracialouise) on Jan 21, 2016 at 4:47pm PST

{A night sky embellished for the flight of the Franquet's epauletted fruit bat (Epomops franqueti).}

 

A video posted by Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison (@gracialouise) on Jan 4, 2016 at 10:36pm PST

{Earlier, selecting four from twenty-four.}

+ When Lenni and Lottie sleep they are great with snow leopards and paper.
+ A collection of Salvaged Relatives on cabinet cards.

Ten.

{111 animals all cut out and waiting.}

ten |ten|
cardinal number
equivalent to the product of five and two; one more than nine; 10 : a visual list of our ten favourite mammals. (Roman numeral: x, X)
• a group or unit of ten of our favourite mammals : ten mammals in a limited edition (of ten) artists' book by Gracia and Louise.

Lately, when asked about projects Louise and I had on the go, I was inclined to reply that January was not always the most productive working month for us, and 2016 was proving no exception to the rule. However, dusting aside the stop-start crumbs of Christmas and a New Year, I see we have something. A collaborative artists' book, half finished.

An edition of ten, the process of this artists' book has been making itself a regular fixture on our instagram feed. Untitled as yet, but in essence, a love letter to ten randomly selected (read: favourite) mammals. A visual extension of the type of list you draw up in your head of, say, your ten favourite authors, colours, sounds, foods and so forth.

The first part of this book is already complete. It features ten of Louise's lemonwood engravings, all velvety black and dense. A Polar bear, a Howler monkey, a Rufous mouse lemur, and a Greater stick-nest rat alongside a Sea otter untethered from it's kelp bedding, they are all there waiting. Waiting for their collaged companions to finally catch up. (A variation of the Sea otter and the not-so-elusive-when-on-paper Snow leopard appeared late last year in Port Jackson Press Print Gallery's Christmas exhibition.)

Two images side-by-side, one printed, the other a unique-state collage, and all housed within a handmade black Solander box. Yes, of all the artists’ books we have worked on, this one has changed its form the most. And, in this case, it has been for the better, though we’re still at the slippery otter midpoint.

I look forward to sharing more of this work with you. I look forward to the year of the (brilliant) monkey. But first, I've a suite of antelopes to glue as the squirrels dry.

 

A video posted by Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison (@gracialouise) on Jan 27, 2016 at 3:06pm PST

{Howler monkey business on the working table.}




















{Taking pleasing shape, on the working table.}

Farewell Teddy.

{Meeting Teddy, at @rspcavictoria.}

Monday’s To-do list:
Call local council and cancel dog permit in process for Teddy
Call the RSPCA and see how Teddy is coping.

An intended ‘Meet Teddy’ post on the heels of a ‘Dear Percy’ post has become another goodbye tale, and it has torn my heart in two. Sadly, Teddy is not suitable for our menagerie and our menagerie (of small, chase-able animals) is not suited for a dear dog with a keen and active prey instinct.

At the time we adopted him, Thursday of last week, this was not known to us, but in the days that followed it became apparent that he saw Lenni, Olive, and Misha as something to hunt rather than befriend or grow indifferent towards. We followed the training exercises for introducing a new dog to cats, practising on the cats’ terms when they were ready, and always supervised and with diverting dog treats in hand, but though Lenni and Misha, in particular, began stoutheartedly they quickly became wary of him. Even the more robust visiting neighbourhood cats, Frank, Millie, and Tommy, after a few close scrapes, heeded the warning. We tried to convince ourselves that it was just a big adjustment for all involved, but deep down, though neither of us gave it a voice, we knew it was never going to work, unless Teddy and the cats were kept zoned within our house, sharing the space in turns. As Teddy grew increasingly focused on fast-moving Lenni, he lunged at him and snapped on two occasions and it was only because we were both there that the outcome was not a tragic one for all involved.

When the cats were not in the room, he was the teddy bear languid and snuggly. The longhaired heartbreaker with black currant eyes. A shrunken polar bear. Easy to train, desperate to please, relaxed in our company: the quintessential man’s best friend and Voltaire’s "most faithful". This could work, we dreamed. We can do this, we thought. We’ll get there, with time. And more training. And besides, he’s adorable. Never ones to take the easy path, we rallied. In adopting Teddy, a six-year-old rescue dog, we were giving him the second chance he merited. In adopting Teddy, he became a physical symbol of our hope. And abandoning this hope has been one heavy millstone. Rationally, we understand that there was no way for it to work, for the cats to feel and be safe, for Teddy to flourish as the sweet dear he is, but in our hearts, we feel we’ve let Teddy down.

As the post-operative anaesthetic for his de-sexing wore off and he finished his course of antibiotics for kennel cough, Teddy also began to show lead aggression and he would snap at other dogs. Initially, we put it down to the steep learning curve we were all on, when not blaming ourselves. At home, on his own, he looked and was the teddy bear who loved belly rubs and to be brushed. Louise called the RSPCA about Teddy’s behaviour to see if there was anything in his case file in relation to how he was with other animals. It was then that we found out about his known socialisation issues with other dogs. This alone, this we could have worked with. Independent of the prey instinct towards cats, we could have got Teddy through the aggression towards other dogs with training. Treatable, just like his flea allergy and tendency to whimper if out of your sight.

On Saturday morning, we drove Teddy back to the RSPCA. Red-eyed from crying all night, we had to surrender Teddy and it was the hardest thing either of us has ever had to do. An affront to everything we believe about caring for animals and accepting responsibility, it remains an emotional yoke to bear. A kick in the guts, a constriction in the throat, grief is physically felt in the body. An anvil has been placed inside my chest cavity: the weight of guilt and love—but we’d adopted him, we surrendered him, legally, absolutely. The RSPCA staff and vollies were empathetic towards us and the whole unfortunate mess, assuring us it was as if we’d provided him with great foster care in his post-operative phase, but right now, to me, it feels like I’ve broken an animal’s trust. Though we know it was the only decision we could have made, in the best interests of Teddy (in the long term) and the menagerie we so desperately wanted him to be a part of, doing ‘the right thing’ was, and remains, so damn hard. Part of opening up your heart means you inevitably get hurt.

Teddy, we miss you. As I write this late on Saturday evening, I know you are alone in your kennel, crying and confused and scared. But I also know that the good and caring folk at the RSPCA will soon find you the right fit forever home you deserve*. If the comments you drew out from strangers are any indication—he’s just so cute!—this will be soon.

* Since writing this, Louise called the RSPCA to see how Teddy was doing and he is already on hold. His potential new owners are coming in to the shelter to see him today. It is such a sweet relief and we trust they’ll all be very happy together. In a home where he is the only dog, he’ll do just fine.












{Farewell Ted.}

Dear Percy.

{The long goodbye.}

Spending time in the transition between what was and how I remember what was, facts are curling, memories are forming. I am caught in that tender spot where I still expect to hear Percy’s little trot-trot-trot on the kitchen floor. To see his little face appear as he enters a room, propelled by a tail that wags so happily it is a blur. Present tense, not past. Not yet. Where in the quiet dark of the night familiar household forms assume the appearance of him. A pillow on the floor, the semblance of his sleeping body, nestled. Later, his outline is suggested by a white paper bag of stale bread placed by the backdoor. Lit by moonlight and softened by sleepy, unfocused eyes, one small inanimate bag is momentarily capable of reconstructing itself into the animate beloved. Conjured before my eyes, my sweet canine sits waiting to go outside. Tomorrow's breadcrumbs for birds no longer.

Shadows too, they are in on the lark. Out the corner of my eye, they tumble into his shape in a game of shadow-play tomfoolery. Percy, he appears in the negative spaces as often as the positive. It is a game of pleasing, flexible deception that lets me know he is near. And tied to this close presence is the sense that I am already forgetting particular things about him. The feel of his fur, the sound of his conversations, the size of the cataracts in his eyes (were they the same in both eyes?), the baldness of his underbelly, the symmetrical swirls of his hair on his back chops, his dark muzzle before it greyed. Photos and small films, they fill in the gaps, but only from one camera angle. They are already as reliable as my recollections, a coloured echo.

But I remember him on our walks, now more than ever, as I tread a path that is as familiar as it is not. The same path, different tempo, my passage now is less stop-start-stop. I can still place him pulling at the lead to get to a smell or to leave a mark on the fence post for another. I feel his absence, walking 'dogless' in the park. And I remember the heavy warmth of his little body on his last day as Louise and I held him in our arms. I remember the faint green of the mixture that travelled up the clear tubing that put him to final sleep. I remember seeing his little right front paw buckle and thinking: oh, that’s it, it’s happening right now, his departure, this is goodbye and it is swift. I remember the calmness of him, and the unobtrusive gentleness of his vet. I remember thinking this is hard; stay calm for Percy’s sake, and Louise’s, and the vet, Craig. I remember thinking this was the best ending for a dear little chap. The ending we’d promised when we adopted him five years ago. A good final chapter, full of love, care, and time spent rolling in the grass. Of walks where he could set the initial pace and later we’d fall into slack-lead rhythm. I remember that he looked at peace, lying there on the table. And though his eyes remained open, I remember that he looked like he was sleeping. A toy flea for a pillow and my old jumper for a blanket. And now, some days later, I remember what a dear little soul he was. He gave us such love and loyalty. He taught us so much. He shall always be missed.

Percy passed away four days into the New Year. We believe he was sixteen years old, but we don’t know anything of his life before we adopted him from a rescue group. However we do know he loved cats, and small children, especially small children offering him bits of biscuit or toast. He had a certain fondness, too, for men who drank turpentine for breakfast. He is being cremated and we will bury his ashes in the front garden that he loved to be in. We will lay him to rest alongside his dear buddy, Omar. Together they can keep guard, keep warm, keep company. Together, in a nest of flowers. Always.

Thank-you for all your heartfelt messages about our dear Mr. P. It has meant so very much to both of us. Thank-you.

Oh Perce! How empty the house without you.

 

A video posted by Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison (@gracialouise) on Jan 3, 2016 at 10:23pm PST

{The last walk on the last day.}














{To Perce. Forever. To Perce. Dearly missed. xo}

+ Percy, in the clouds!
+ Yes, a very good first day of the year, leisurely worn in
+ To the dog belongs the Saturday
+ Loosen up, unwind, unbend, and take it easy
+ In summation

For auld lang syne, my jo. For auld lang syne. We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet. For auld lang syne.

 

A video posted by Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison (@gracialouise) on Dec 30, 2015 at 2:39pm PST

No best-of lists and notable moments, just a little black and white merriment for you all, dear hearts, and a warm wish for the brightest of New Years. May 2016 come with good health, a corner turned, plenty of love and laughter, new projects to spring into action, and time to make and dream.

Tails up, raise your glasses and sing. Happy New Year!

Yours wrapped in optimism,
Gracia and Louise
(and Percy, Lenni, Olive, Misha, Zelda, Timmy, and the ring-ins, naturally)
XO




















{Pause. Ten from one hundred frames in a little under fifteen seconds. Loosely inspired by gold-lamé in silence.}

+ #gracialouiseadvent2015, in full (or one by one)
+ Silent film dreaming, with dog

(Musical snippet from the tail end of 'Púsl' by Amiina from Puzzle, 2010.)

Eight bouquets.

{From when it was the 7th of December no matter which way you looked at it.}

bouquet |bʊˈkeɪ, bəʊˈkeɪ, ˈbʊkeɪ|
noun
1 a bunch of flowers presented in the form of a collage during the lead up to Christmas.

Eight December days in and our advent calendar continues to sprout whiskers, new shoots, and the odd long tail. In case you missed it, here is a look at what was, from the 1st of December through to the 8th. Created in equal parts for the fun of it and for you, an advent calendar with the intention to see you lightly to Christmas Day.

 

A video posted by Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison (@gracialouise) on Dec 7, 2015 at 10:34pm PST

+ Suspended at Milly Sleeping. Small brooches. Many animals. Hand-cut ornaments. All December long.

+ Horse chestnut. Yellow-lark nasturtium. Buttercup. Sweet Woodruff. Toadflax. Blooming papier mâché from University Melbourne's Herbarium. (My learned object: collections & curiosities, The Ian Potter Museum of Art)

+ Hurrah! Hurrah! Our artists' book, A deck of Salvaged Relatives, was recently acquired by the State Library Victoria.

+ In the museum, with her trusty 2B pencil, Louise drew the portraits of an obedient long-nosed potoroo and a tame echidna. (Expect a Museum Victoria zine in 2016, to be sure.)

Adding to the melody.

{Paper ornaments, cut by hand, to serve as festive roost for our brand new badges especially for Milly Sleeping, with a dash of Lenni.}

or•na•ment
noun |ˈôrnəmənt|
a thing used to adorn something but usually having no practical purpose, esp. a small object such as 120 hand-cut paper decorations.
• decoration added to embellish Milly Sleeping

From a Columbine Cup from Nuremberg, 1573-1580, the convex curve of a bell we made. A drawing of bronze French handbell from the second half of the 12th century became another of our paper baubles. From a lidded beer tankard, c. 1540, came a green lantern, while another was fashioned from a table clock of rock crystal and silver guilt, c. 1750.

Six different ornamental shapes hand-cut and decorated with our brand new badges. Part Middle Ages and Renaissance to present day, with an owl and a donkey. Making treasure from treasures and all especially for Milly Sleeping, in something of its own beautiful working pattern.

Last year, we brought to Carlton a troupe of Salvaged Relatives in an ornamental spin. In 2012, a charm of golden finches and their hidden and painterly gems. Today, for the bright festive days of December, 120 hand-cut paper ornaments. Pinned to each ornament, a selection of our fourteen new badges (ten small and four medium). Collaged. Decorative. Wearable. For lapels or ears.

Head to Milly Sleeping (157 Elgin Street, Carlton) to see and perhaps lay claim to a colourful bunch.

(Milly Sleeping is now also open on a Monday for the month of December.)

 

 

Fourteen different badges. On six different paper ornaments. To wear on ears or hang on trees. Especially for @milly_sleeping and available now. Enjoy!

A video posted by Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison (@gracialouise) on Nov 28, 2015 at 9:15pm PST

 

 

#tinyoverseer hard at work tapping his tail on a Saturday. #theworkingtable

A video posted by Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison (@gracialouise) on Nov 27, 2015 at 6:51pm PST

 

{For Milly, for December, for you.}


{Something new in hand, with added aadvark.}


{An ornament in need of a bough. One of one hundred and twenty.}


{Old dog; new badge.}

Thanks Leah. We always enjoy coming up with something just for Milly.

+ Salvaged Relatives launched at Milly Sleeping (2015)

+ Last legs of our November sale. Simply enter the code word REBOOTED upon checkout to receive 30%-off your whole order on zines, cards, and every little thing in our online store until the end of November.
+ Something familiar. Our two prints, And Zarafa Kept Walking (2013) and Turning the Tables on Alfred Court (2013), exhibited as part of the group exhibition, Street Stories, at Delmar Gallery.
+ Speaking of familiar. Lenni!

'And so under the birches and pine boughs I found a springtime riddle'.

{Percy's reprieve! We may have another week; we may make it to the New Year! Percy's kindly vet has assured us that the tumour looks worse than it is, and he is still comfortable and with spark. Thank-you for all your kind words and good thoughts. Were that all long goodbyes could be like this.}


{That's it! @pasadenamansions sure knows how to capture Mr. Percy's grin. (Elaine Haby's sketchbook tales, #dailydrawingforayear.)}


{I'll keep you steady (2012), in hand. One of a handful of postcard collages.}

A small message to let you know, loyal sorts, that new greeting cards have landed in our online store featuring Salvaged Relatives in costumes for dancing by Sonia Delaunay and tiger stripes by Gilbert Adrian.

In addition to these cards and just because, you'll also find a very small selection of original postcard collages (previously exhibited as part of an installation of 464 postcards on the gallery wall).

And while you are there, please do remember that our NOVEMBER SALE still has legs. Simply enter the code word 'REBOOTED' upon checkout to receive 30%-off your whole order on anything in our online store from now until the 30th of November.


{From a Magical Saturday afternoon. (Magical: an exhibition of prints by 47 artists, Neospace, 7 Campbell Street, Collingwood, curated by the brilliant (and booted and bruised) @ronagreenart, until the 11th of December.)}


{Two of our artists' books, 30 days in Vienna (2003) and Melbourne in 31 days (2002), are currently on display at the State Library of Victoria as part of their permanent exhibition, Mirror of the World: books and ideas.}


{Because there is always the floor. Rest easy, dear Olive.}


{Louise's Sea otter (2015) and Snow leopard (2015) awaiting their spot on the gallery wall.}


{Because Lenni. He catches rainbows.}


{We are thrilled (and blurred) to have our artists' book, As inclination directs (2013), feature in The Craft Companion by Ramona Barry and Rebecca Jobson, published by Thames & Hudson.}


{A fan of new cards, available at Milly Sleeping in Carlton and through our online store.}


{In the gallery, checking up on old friends. A deck of Salvaged Relatives (2015) tucked inside a fairy tale inside a Solander box-nest where old age and weary muscles will not find them.}

Our two prints, And Zarafa Kept Walking (2013) and Turning the Tables on Alfred Court (2013) will be exhibited as part of the group exhibition of urban tales, Street Stories, at Delmar Gallery.

Street Stories
Delmar Gallery, Trinity Grammar School, 144 Victoria Street, Ashfield, NSW
22nd November to 6th December

And Louise's two beautiful and tender lemonwood engravings, Sea otter (2015) and Snow leopard (2015) will be exhibited as part of the group exhibition, Wrap Up, at Port Jackson Press Print Gallery.

Wrap Up
Port Jackson Press Print Gallery, 84 Smith Street, Collingwood, Victoria
25th November to 23rd December

+ Edvard Hagerup Grieg composed the song Våren (Spring, also known as The Last Spring) as his Opus 33, no.2, to words by Aasmund Olavsson Vinje. “Once more I saw winter before spring drove it away; again I was able to see the branches of the cherry tree blossom. Once more I saw the ice as it thawed. I saw the snow melt and the rapids in the brook foaming. Once more I saw the green grass and the flowers. Once more I heard the spring bird sing to the sun and the summer. One day, I will bathe in the spring air that fills my eyes, and there I will find a home. Everything that spring has brought me, the flowers I gathered, all seem the spirits of my forefathers dancing and sighing! And so under the birches and pine boughs I found a springtime riddle. And the sound of the flute that I carved seems as though I am weeping.”

'Ordinary people doing ordinary things'.

{Three stills from Roy Andersson's film, You, the Living (2007), and Caroline Meaden and Alice Dixon performing This is What's Happening (2015).}

Beloved Be, my response to This is What's Happening, drawn up especially for Fjord Review. (Thank-you Penelope.)

This is What’s Happening
Alice Dixon, Caroline Meaden and William McBride

The Oratory, Abbotsford Convent, Collingwood
as part of Open Spaces 15
presented by KAGE
Sunday 8^th November, 2015

Head down, an old man shuffles with the assistance of a wheeled walking frame past the ghostly blue façade of a building. Unbeknownst to him, his dog is tangled in his own lead and is being dragged on his back through the grey streets. In the background, a traditional jazz band plays.

A man in his lounge room practices his sousaphone. A half drunk glass of beer on the table beside him. Unbeknownst to him, his playing is driving his wife to despair. She enters the room through the doorway behind him, raises her hands to her head and screams. Moments later, somewhere off camera, she slams a door causing a picture frame to fall into the fish tank below. The man keeps playing.

This pair of black-humoured vignettes of 'ordinary people doing ordinary things'[i] are from Roy Andersson's 2007 film, You, the Living, but equally, they could be from Alice Dixon, Caroline Meaden and William McBride’s recent performance, This is What’s Happening, winner of this year’s Melbourne Fringe Festival's Best Dance.

“In a caravan. In a caravan park”, standing side by side, facing forward, a couple recount the mundane moments of their holiday: cleaning spilled chicken noodle soup off the floor, and an unremarkable meal shared when they “ate out, once”. Delivered with deadpan assurance, the staccato chit-chat (to the audience) of Meaden and McBride, as the underwhelmed beige pairing, encapsulated all that it is to be human. Twiddle thumbs. Talk about the traffic. The weather. Alone. Together. Viewed in this way, the small, unfiltered trifles actually revealed the whole picture.

Absurdist tragicomedies of the trivialities of everyday life; one told through the medium of film, the other through dance and spoken word. Both with controlled aesthetics, bleached of colour, albeit the second, to be fair to the dark and meticulous genius of the Swedish film director, Andersson (who received a Gold Lion for Best Film for his recent work, A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (2014)), presented with less refinement.

But still, seated in the Oratory of the Abbotsford Convent, the connection to Andersson's work for me remained. From the light timber panelling on the back wall, the stained glass windows to my left and right, and the muted palette of a soft smudged sage green, I could well have been within my own Andersson hand-built tableau the other day. Presented by KAGE as part of their curated dance series for the Convent’s Open Spaces festival, alongside Amy Macpherson’s meditative piece, SOMA, the leap from my reality to imagined film set was small. Encompassed by Andersson’s hallmark hues: the pale washed-out green of a bathtub in which a woman soaks, singing a Russian folksong full of sorrow; the bilious yellow of boiled potatoes; and the steel blue of the Louisiana Brass Band playing Mozart's lullaby, 'Sleep My Little Prince, Fall Asleep', throughout a thunderstorm. Flanked by the dreary grey of rainfall during the peak hour commute, and finding no shelter at the crowded bus stop; the ashen pallor of a carpet salesman weeping: "A lot of things are going wrong today; It’s just not my day."; and the trench coat beige of a worn out doctor’s despair brought on my bemoaning patients, the effect was absolute for Andersson’s reduced palette is also that of the beige long john-like pants worn by McBride and the bloomer-like shorts of Dixon. In costumes designed by Margaret O’Donohue, the emphasis was upon the bruised form beneath it. The emphasis: the smallness of your very existence.

Owing to the temporary nature of the former oratory/rented-space, when strongly lit so as to obliterate shadow, I was afforded a little of Andersson’s "light without mercy". The stark mise en scène laid bare the flaws and vulnerabilities of the human condition. The minimalist staging empathised the loneliness and weakness of each character[ii]. The natural depth of the performance space, thrice that of the seated area, echoed Andersson’s favoured deep-focus shots. Throughout the performance, I became Andersson’s static camera, but my characters, Dixon, Meaden and McBride, moved without my control. Their often tilted, outward movements suggested the inner states of their minds as they grappled with the “peculiar, slippery.... logic amidst the chaos — the permission to not know what is happening."[iii] Breaking the stillness by leaning to the side, almost about to tip, greater weight was given not just to the supporting leg, but to how the subsequent movement was read. With its salient movements and familiar elliptical dialogue, delivered facing the audience, the performance was a mirror. Quite literally in the sense that as I watched all three performers stand with their hands clasped before them, quietly, contentedly, twiddling their thumbs, I realised I, too, was holding my hands in the same way (though I resisted the urge to join in the liberation of the letting my thumbs encircle one another lest it was read as mockery or boredom, which neither it was).

Where Andersson has given us the poems of César Vellejo spoken aloud[iv], This is What’s Happening gave us the all-too-brief yet perfectly timed high-pitched heartache and jubilation of a Cajun two-step. What better way to reference the mundane 9 to 5 world than with a few Cajun tears to oil your fiddle and squeeze box? The beautiful oral poetry of the everyday life, where ‘la maison’ is a metaphor for love, marriage and fidelity, a perfect near-wail to the woman who rises at 4.30am and eats "because she really should have something" and packs some fruit and a muesli bar for her morning commute. Think: Iry LeJeune 'Lacassine Special' or Joseph and Cléoma Falcon 'Allons a Lafayette'. The timeless poetry and true beauty of the commonplace unifies us all. With one short musical interlude, the importance of comic timing and expression was confirmed in their dancehall pas de trois.

In continued link to Andersson’s self-contained, self-called "trivialism" films, movement in this work performed a comic function as well as an expressive or symbolic function. It was found in the playful fingers that sought out another’s nose to poke, and in the brilliant wriggly worm vibrations and (the impression of) inflatable buttocks in the opening vignette. It was found in the borrowed hand gestures of everyday characters plucked from t.v. programmes (BBC's Gavin and Stacey, and the Australian '70s soap, Number 96), which shown in a new context took on an entirely different meaning. Dixon, who I have previously seen perform in Reckless Sleepers’ A String Section and Nat Cursio's (work in development) Tiny Slopes, was fantastically poker-faced. All three were characterised by a mordant humour and a humanist ethos encased within a fumbling banality, and it was refreshing to see a performance in which the expressions of the face were given equal weight to the expressions of the body. Humour, good, black, abstracted, and just how I like it, requires a great face to deliver it. Moreover, it must be tempered by tragedy to leave one a little unsure.

This is What’s Happening erred on the lighter side of dark, but it (like You, the Living) hinted at Goethe’s Roman Elegies (1790): "Be pleased then, you, the living, in your delightfully warmed bed, before Lethe’s ice-cold wave will lick your escaping foot.” It formed the inescapable undercurrent to McBride’s: “Okay then. Love you all. And stay well."

Notes:
[i] "An ordinary mind on an ordinary day. The mind receives a myriad impressions — trivial, fantastic, evanescent, or engraved with the sharpness of steel. From all sides they come, an incessant shower of innumerable atoms; and as they fall, as they shape themselves into the life of Monday or Tuesday...." Virginia Woolf, 'Modern Fiction' (1919) in The Common Reader, (University of Adelaide ebook, accessed 9^th November, 2015), chap. 13.
[ii] "For Roy Andersson what makes a scene interesting has to do with a character’s relation to the space around them.... According to Andersson, this effect is achieved by emphasizing the room, by placing ‘the human being in an environment that (...) helps depict human beings as unaware of their own behavior. They are positioned in the room in a way that brings out the subconscious in the dialogues, and the human condition is exposed, so to speak: A small individual — comic, tragicomic, tragic — in this big world during her short time on this earth, with all her ... dreams, and so on’.” Julianne Qiuling Ma Yang, ‘Towards a cinema of contemplation: Roy Andersson’s aesthetics and ethics’, PhD diss. (University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, March 2013), p 99
[iii] Alice Dixon, Caroline Meaden and William McBride, This is What’s Happening artists’ statement, Dance Series Curated by KAGE, Abbotsford Convent, single page programme, 8^th November 2015
[iv] “Beloved be the one who sleeps on his back. The one who wears a torn shoe in the rain. Beloved be the bald man without hat. The one who catches a finger in the door.” César Vallejo (1892–1938), ‘Stumble Between Two Stars,' as recited in Roy Andersson’s Songs from the Second Floor, 2000.