HIGH UP IN THE TREES

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.)

'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.”

Motion is steady. Motion is frenetic.

{Last Work performed by Batsheva Dance Company (Image credit: Batsheva Dance Company website)}

In absolute awe. Especially for Fjord Review, Craftwork. (Thank-you, Penelope, I enjoyed taking you in my pocket.)

Orhad Naharin’s Last Work (2015)
Batsheva Dance Company

Performances seen:
Saturday 17^th October
Sunday 18^th October

State Theatre, Arts Centre Melbourne
Melbourne Festival

Performed by Batsheva Dance Company dancers season 2014/15

"The soul desires to dwell with the body because without the members of the body it can neither act nor feel." —Leonardo da Vinci

Motion builds slowly. In the form of a wave that ripples through the body. Omri Drumlevich moves as if possessed, eyes fixed on a point somewhere behind me. With his left arm outstretched in counter balance and his supporting leg bent, the right side of his body gives over to an undulation of controlled movement. His right hand rests upon his bent suspended right leg, his forearm in direct line with his shin, as if fusing two parts of the body previously independent. The hand now fixed on the knee, the familiar line of the body altered, through Drumlevich's body courses an inward sensation made outwardly visible. As his stirring builds, the pace quickens, and I am mesmerised. Without theatrics and pomp, he appears to have altered the range of movement in the ball and socket workings of his knee joint.

Motion is steady. In the form of a lone dancer on a treadmill, tirelessly running. Dressed in bright blue, the runner remains a constant, adjusting how I perceive time and space. Their pace never alters, their direction never changes, their destination, never reached. The runner remains steadfast as the dancers on the stage before and around them explore an impossible range of motions. The juxtaposition between the runner's enduring pattern and the uncertainty of the dancers, itself a beautiful conversation. Both represent unwavering determination, but both runner and dancers reach it differently. The message I read in Ohad Naharin's Last Work (2015): more things unite us than divide us.

Motion is frenetic. In the form of wild energy unleashed, unmasked, unrobed. It pulsates and shakes to the relentless 4/4 beat of Hysteric’s 'Club Life'. The driving sound of Baltimore rapper, Sagat’s aptly named 'Few Mysteries Solved in a Year of Contact' and the accompanying action on the stage above all reveal to me how hard it is to remain true to your own course as those around you do otherwise. As Oscar Ramos, in low runners’ crouch, moves his head forward and back, forward and back, as if 'eating sound', Zina (Natalya) Zinchenko thrusts her hips side to side as she whips her right hand in-out, in-out, in-out before her face. In a tight knot on the stage, each dancer repeats their own looped, instinctual movement and a machine is made of varying parts: all linked, all different. Converting movement into heat and energy, an engine of dancers appears, with Maayan Sheinfeld, a spark plug, and no shortage of dancers vying for the role of crankshaft, connecting rod, and piston. For though I’m likening this engine to a machine, it is completely animal. Primal impulses, unmistakably, front and centre, an echo of Nijinsky’s erotic Faun.

Motion is carefully measured. In the form of the pas de deux performed by Hsin-Yi Hsiang and Adi Zlatin. Moving as if one body, side by side, the cruelty of this metered tenderness comes from the fact that I cannot truly look at both their expressions at the one time. I leap from face to face, limb to limb, like some frenzied bee in search of nectar, trying to take it all in, again noting more similarities than differences. And while I cannot understand the words of the four Romanian lullabies that feature alongside the likes of Luminox’s high-key tinkling 'Tantrum', I understand their universal meaning, or rather, I feel their meaning. As Naharin explains, lullabies are "sung by horrible parents and wonderful parents, too". And it is this expression of "joy and pain and sadness [living] in the same space; [that] don’t contradict each other"[i] that Last Work drives home for me.

Though we don’t remain in the nursery for long, as William Barry, clad in yellow shorts, relentlessly wields a grogger, a Purim noisemaker, and drowns out the gun-polishing suggestive actions of his fellow dancer, the Haman villain to Purim's story, perhaps.[ii] With momentum causing the board to clack against the gearwheel, Barry has become an instrument. On the heels of the joyous Decadance (one night only at Melbourne Festival), fresh from its Tel-Aviv premiere, Last Work challenges me to work. It demands the audience work at keeping pace. It demands and deserves engagement.






{Last Work performed by Batsheva Dance Company (Image credit: Batsheva Dance Company website)}

In the temporary seats installed in the State Theatre above the filled-in orchestra pit, the audience participation that only the other night I had longed for. In the second row, I feel in the midst of the rapidly shifting convulsions of the eighteen dancers. Bathed in the bright lights, up close, real close, so close as to reach out and touch, the reverberation fells almost forbidden. Privy to every twitch and flex, above my head soars the embodiment of Naharin’s Gaga. "Body builders with soft spine," aware of their "explosive power"[iii]. When Ian Robinson lands crouched at the foot of the stage and appears to look right through me, I fail to return his gaze. Seated up close, the intensity of expression across the faces of all the dancers is fantastically unnerving so as to feel almost voyeuristic.

As Hsiang crouches like a small pebble atop Shamel Pitts, I am reminded of moments within Sadeh21 when one dancer stood atop another in a cat-like pose. As Iyar Elezra in small white tutu vibrates before the convulsing Berry: the familiar tapping into of unconscious, animalistic movement. As Pitts slithers beneath three dancers in bridge pose, the fluidity of their upper bodies, hypnotic. The recurring motifs of balance, sensual connectedness, and the ability to yield, are all in evidence. "Gaga is a lot about developing bigger awareness, so what is delicate becomes more delicate, what is wild becomes more wild, what is quick becomes more quick. It’s about the flow of energy and being available, open. Even if we don’t move, it is a state of mind that you are available — for anything."[iv] Just as there are recurring motifs within the choreography, within Gaga there are recognisable tendues, arabesques, and bourrées alongside jaw-dropping backbends that hover, teasingly, just above the floor from a wide-legged stance (Elezra and Zinchenko: I’m looking at you). The emphasis feels always about expression over an overt display of virtuosity, even though I am frequently left in awe by its energy and power.

As coloured confetti not gunfire rains, a white flag is proudly waved, and Robinson sets to making a structure from packaging tape, radiating from a standing microphone. A cacophony of noise! The screech of tape, that deafening sound! Binding the dancers together, one at a time, with an endless roll (a seamless transitioning between three rolls of tape worn as bracelets), the independent parts become one. Resistance, in this case, literally means tape garrotting your neck. The tape at first seems playful in its futility, but the resulting restrictions read as anything but. Unable to move in the free means previously relished, Last Work draws to dramatic, inevitable close. However, I read a message of hope in the curtain call where the dancers share two pairs of small scissors[v] and cut themselves free. As with Decadance beginning before it started, so too, Last Work does not end, and I cannot wait to see what follows.

Notes:
[i] Ohad Naharin quoted by Anna Della Subin, ‘Going Gaga of Ohad Naharin’, The New York Times Style Magazine, 19^th September, 2015 (accessed 16th October, 2015).
[ii] Rabbi Shimon Apisdorf, 'Grogger: The Purim Noisemaker', excerpt from The One Hour Purim Primer: Everything a Family Needs to Understand, Celebrate and Enjoy Purim, Leviathan Press, 1995 (accessed 19th October, 2015).
[iii] Naharin on his movement language of Gaga, Batsheva Dance Company website (assessed 19^th October, 2015).
[iv] Naharin quoted by Francesca Horsley, 'Deca Dance, by the Batsheva Dance Company', New Zealand Listener, 9^th January, 2014 (accessed on 16^th October, 2015).
[v] A small aside: as someone who works with collage, I especially delight in seeing scissors being used on the stage. To anyone who has even wrapped multiple packages: you will undoubtedly enjoy the brown packaging tape sequence as you marvel at Robinson’s dexterity. The tape doesn’t split! The end of the roll appears easily found!

{Last Work performed by Batsheva Dance Company, 2015}

{Last Work performed by Batsheva Dance Company, 2015}

Uno. Duo. Under My Skin.

{Decadance performed by Batsheva Dance Company (Image credit: David Harris)}

All things joyous and dark. Wild and Free especially for Fjord Review.

DECADANCE
Batsheva Dance Company
Choreographer and Artistic Director: Ohad Naharin

Thursday 15^th October, 2015
State Theatre, Melbourne
as part of Melbourne Festival

Segments from Ohad Naharin’s creations:
Anaphase (1993), Mabul (1992), Naharin's Virus (2001), Zachacha (1998), Sadeh21 (2011), Telophaza (2006), Three (2005), MAX (2007)

Performed by Batsheva Dance Company dancers season 2014/15

Finding my seat at Ohad Naharin and the Batsheva Dance Company's Decadance, the performance has already begun. In his own private world, on the stage of the State Theatre, Shamel Pitts, in a loose black suit and un-tucked white shirt, is dancing and I am so glad I have arrived with enough time to catch his playful, loose-kneed, liquid groove. To the side-to-side sway of early Samba and late '50s Bossa Nova, his moves call to mind how we might all dance if no one were watching. It is the contented, inward, and liberated dance of getting ready for a party, ironing one's pants to the sounds of Jackie Davis at the console playing the danceable 'Glow Worm Cha Cha Cha', and later changing one's earrings as Peruvian soprano Yma Súmac's pours her allure into the 'Gopher Mambo'. Unhurried, undeterred, pleasurable. The mood is smooth, ripe, and expectant. And as Pitts mimics a wriggly glow worm on the floor, the still-settling audience applauds. With house lights still on, the tone is set.

I am in the hip-swinging, toe-tapping world of Naharin, where movement is transmitted from one to another, from dancer to dancer, from dancer to audience, summoned from within the body to outside of the body. This is what movement looks like when the body does the listening and responds accordingly to its own secret writing at its core. This is freedom. This is unlocked expression. And it is euphoric. It, too, like our crooners earlier, ought be bottled and dispensed on grey-mood days. Watching Pitts, I want to shake like that. Moreover, watching Pitts, I want to be him, the embodiment of The John Buzon Trio's 'It Must Be True'; and so it shall be, if this beginning is as true as it feels.

Originally created to celebrate Naharin’s ten years with Israel’s Bathsheva Dance Company, Decadance brings together several, variable components. For the one-night-only Melbourne performance, as part of Melbourne Festival, the line-up included sections from Anaphase (1993), Mabul (1992), Naharin's Virus (2001), Zachacha (1998), Sadeh21 (2011), Telophaza (2006), Three (2005), and MAX (2007). Naharin has described it "like a game, a playground where we can subtract, add and erase the different sections of the works we have already done and look at what we do from another angle. I take unfinished stories and put them together. The coherence comes from the sense of the whole."[i]

Breaking through the smoothness, the King of the Surf Guitar, Dick Dale’s "let us rejoice" 'Hava Nagila' cuts the scene to black. In the dark theatre, on tenterhooks, though still, inwardly I am ready and waiting to spring. I am fully engaged from the outset. I have a sense of what is to come (thanks to film and the pixelated recordings found on YouTube), but this is the first time I have seen the company perform with my eyes, unfiltered. With my senses on high alert, a curve of black suited dancers stands wide-legged, each before a foldable chair. Against the black backdrop of the stage, this illuminated half-circle reminds me of a serpent or an animals' spine. But equally, with their black hats, they could be Hasidim (“pious ones”). Performed by Naharin and The Tractor's Revenge, the traditional cumulative folksong 'Echad mi Yodea' ("Who Knows One?") follows the musical beat and, by getting under my skin, charges it further. The intensity of both this familiar Passover song coupled with the dancers own heartfelt vocalisation of the words cannot help but make you wish to be up there on the stage rather than seated in the stalls.

The dancers pass the movement from one to another like a bullet ricocheting or a current surging. The last in line: he receives the blow. He falls to the ground. They act in unison, save the one who collapses, and the one who rebels and leaps up to stand on his chair. White-shirted bellies up to the ceiling, arms and legs flung wide, this is automatic, felt movement, infectious as it builds, and fast. Where it not for the seated arc, I doubt I’d be able to pinpoint the source. Movements are repeated, and variations added as first a jacket is removed and tossed into the centre to make a crumpled loose heap. Then boots, shirts, and finally suit pants. In wide plié, some actions call to mind fast-forwarded footage of a cartoon character eating corn or a typewriter returning to a new line. Other universal actions highlight the animal in all humans, recognised or not. And at sensation’s close, as the dancers on their hands and knees scramble to gather up the discarded clothes scenes of the Holocaust, whether intended or not, come to mind. For though Naharin's choreography has no narrative, when you work at conveying feeling, a story is inevitably told. In this piece, and those that followed, I felt free to 'read' the movements as I would an inkblot. This free message echoes the free movements of all the dancers from the company. And so, later, the line of dancers at the foot of the stage became a red-figured Athenian vase. Against the dark cloth, bodies lit, they glowed a continuous line.

The pieces in Decadance are as playful as they are empowering and affecting. Naharin's choreography allows, or rather, encourages opportunities for discovery, and this is true for the dancers and for the audience, and it was certainly true of my own experience. This is what occurs when you work in the space just beyond the familiar. "We can turn the volume on listening…. and very delicate stuff can become wow."[ii] 'Wow' was found in Adi Zlatin’s broken walk in the fields of Sadeh21. With every step, each leg appeared to rotate in a socket five times its size, causing her thigh to roll backwards, upwards, and forwards, replicating a toddler’s waddle. 'Wow' was found in the fluid intimacy of the pas de deux to Vivaldi’s 'Fac ut arbeat', so beautiful in its searching and longing as to make you weep. Balance tested, backs bent, weight shifted, and the exquisite agony of hopping on one leg: knowing when to change the pace and adjust the volume is vital to Decadence’s ecstasy, making it a new work rather than a disconnected 'greatest hits'. Read as a whole, there is light to shade, slow to fast, and being 'unengaged' is not an option.

This sense of engagement is typified by actual, euphoric audience participation, the likes of which I have never seen, to a sped-up, electrified reconstruction of 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow' (by Harold Arlen and adapted by Marusha). The dancers once more suited and with black hats worn forward, sexy Fedora style, descend the stage in search of new dance partners. Connected, assured, and inviting, this is not cringe-worthy participation but sheer generosity in train. Drawn up on to the stage, colourful audience members in sundresses with '50s swing, a suited man (who I allowed myself to cast as an academic letting their hair down), and a woman in fantastical gold boots; the hot Melbourne carefree night engineered wardrobe perfection, and the resulting thrill this work called forth from deep within is one I will always cherish. To all of those infected audience members who cut loose: I am eternally grateful. To the woman who "sway me smooth, sway me now" hip locked, Dean Martin style with the moustachioed Last Man Standing, in particular: you were marvellous. "Yielding is constant while we are ready to snap.... We explore multi-dimensional movement, we enjoy the burning sensation in our muscles, we are aware of our explosive power and sometimes we use it. We change our movement habits by finding new ones, we can be calm and alert at once. We become available."[iii]

As I wait for tonight's premiere of Naharin’s Last Work (2015), with new eyes, "calm and alert", I work on my own moves to the guttural counting of 'Uno Duo'. One: the body in contrapposto. Two: "a little teapot, short and stout". Three: an open hand above the head like a cockatoo's crest. Four: 'make' like an Egyptian. Created by Naharin, under the pseudonym Maxim Warratt, my one, one-two, one-two-three, one-two-three-four sequence has all the expressive, rapid sensations I can conjure, but sadly none of the grace, balance, and skill of the Batsheva dancers, "wild, and free"[iv].

Notes:
[i] Ohad Naharin in interview, 'A Toolbox for Dancers', TanzRaumBerlin, accessed 15^th October, 2015.
[ii] (Transcribed from audio) Naharin discussing his dance process, 'Batsheva Dance Company: 'It’s about making the body listen'', The Guardian, published 14^th November, 2013, accessed 15^th October, 2015.
[iii] Naharin on GAGA movement, Batsheva Dance Company website, accessed 16^th October, 2015.
[iv] "All good things are wild, and free." —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

{Sadeh21 performed by Batsheva Dance Company}

{Decadance performed by Batsheva Ensemble}


{Decadance performed by Batsheva Ensemble}

{Batsheva Ensemble (2012)}

+ Batsheva Dance Company (YouTube)

Pins in spin.

{A shared affinity with a Giant hummingbird (Patagona gigas).}


{....but then again. We'll have to wait and see.}

Because lately I can't fathom where the Time has gone. In cahoots with Days, though I've the map, I've been given the slip. Months spin fast like a whirligig. Truth Cats wear sunglasses, and pose before coloured velour and satin backcloths (Show cats, I through XI, you exquisite beauties, how I adore you). Baron's court Princesses, when not flying on canon balls. Artists' books are made in part from everyday garments (Art of the Cuff). Feathers fly, and inky mishaps occur. Waxworks become fantastically real. And while the cat's away, the dog, as they say, will try his paw at directing.

Spinning in the middle of all this activity, World Ballet Day, a fluttering celebration for my carefree pins. (Two collages of moving parts created for my own amusement and your enjoyment.)

 

A video posted by Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison (@gracialouise) on Sep 30, 2015 at 8:05pm PDT

{Happy #WorldBalletDay, dear @ausballet. #PowerToTransform}

 

A video posted by Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison (@gracialouise) on Oct 6, 2015 at 1:07am PDT

{Footloose and fancy-free.}

{The gentlest of owls. the Laughing owl (Sceloglaux albifacies). Last recorded sighting July, 1914. "It could always be brought from its lurking place in the rocks, after dusk, by the strains of an accordion....the bird would silently flit over the face of the performer and finally take up its station in the vicinity, and remain within easy hearing till [the music] had ceased." —Sir Walter Buller, New Zealand ornithologist}


{In accord with an animal who has black currants for eyes. (The central Australian Desert Rat-kangaroo (Caloprymnus campestris) was last seen in 1935.)}


{In harmony with the Seychelles parakeet (Psittacula wardi). (The last recorded sighting of the Seychelles parakeet was June 1870. Little is known of its habits, save for a fondness for maize.)}


{Thursday's costume, a dragon with scales of overlapping gold and silver sequins. (Designed by Travis Banton for actress Anna May Wong in her role as Tu Tuan, a nightclub entertainer in the 1934 film, Limehouse Blues.)}


{Florence Hunter's felt a connection with the Guadalupe caracara (Polyborus lutosus). Now extinct, the last recorded sighting of the Guadalupe caracara was on the 1st December 1900 by collector Rollo Beck. Upon visiting the Guadalupe Island, off Baja, California, he saw eleven birds fly overhead, and shot nine of them.}

Donna Maree Haby
28.07.1966 – 22.09.2015
♡

4, 907 minutes.

Monday morning, after 50 films seen at MIFF, and daily life, having tapped its foot to sleep, lies slumped in the wings. Shh. Let’s leave it dozing.

Before it wakes to tangle our thoughts and interrupt our dreams, let us partake in a feast of eggplant tempura, noodles, and fried mackerel worthy of the Sea Cat Diner in Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Our Little Sister (film 50). Pour me a sour plum wine. You prefer freshly caught whitebait on toast? Okay. We can have that too. We can be gluttons in the lounge room, picnicking on the floor. That we are chiefly vegan, but a trifle; our feet have yet to fully touch the ground; rewrite the script.

Let’s keep today a quiet day to think about all we have seen and felt. Let’s leave the post in the letterbox and the washing in the dryer, earmarked: Tuesday, perhaps. Such small, but important, concessions, will leave us free to remain with our heads in the clouds. Let’s shuffle about the house impersonating the recorded voice of an unpolished and unguarded Brando in Stevan Riley’s Listen to Me Marlon (film 28): "This will be a highly personalized document of the life activities of myself, Marlon Brando; Eat less brownies, Marlon; Whatever you do, don’t get caught pretending." To mash it up some more, let’s assume the considered voice of the therapist Anna in Malgorzata Szumowska’s Body (film 29): "Aha… a-hum… aha". Adopt your best listening face.

In the haze of snatched cinematic memory, let us recall pearl buttons, Erna’s letters to Heldur, apple blossom (was it just me, or could you smell it too? Synesthesia, almost, at the Kino!), painted bodies and faces that link to the stars, impossible blue water (please, pass me my oar), rifles, reindeer, and birdsong, always, with a kernel of hope. Hospital beds, this year’s recurring motif (oh, Louise!), appeared with more frequency than Chaplin’s swift and unweighted movements (Land and Shade, Body, Cemetery of Splendour, These Are the Rules, 1001 Grams, Koza, Our Little Sister, Phoenix, Don’t Tell Me the Boy Was Mad, Volcano, Louder Than Bombs, Gayby Baby, My Love, Don’t Cross That River… you get the idea, you were there vs. Thom Andersen's The Thoughts That Once We Had, and others, but sadly I am already starting to forget). And circles too. Be they loops in a time-old pattern of repeated history, marked out on the floor by a character’s path (in the theatrical staging in Eisenstein in Guanajuato), the continued sweep of the camera as it danced around the still form and in doing so created choreographed movement in black and white glory (In the Crosswind), or drawn by hand (Song of the Sea).

An old tyre dragged by a rope tied around the waist of a once great Slovakian boxer with a smashed-in nose (*signs up to an aikido lesson, with a view to box*). A crop encircling a house, a harvest around a volcano, a seasonal island, a non-linear story. And don't forget the islands of Southern Patagonia. An unexpected Rammstein footer with pearls and gold (The Treasure), and racoon masks at the ready in the Land of Cat Elbow (Angels of Revolution). Arabia, Albania, Romania! Watery bodies in the cosmos! Heavens! Such geography! Genocide. Displacement. Tragedy. Hardship. Death. All traversed. Metal rails recovered from the sea floor in Chile. An edible skull placed atop a telephone; Death ready to take the call. There’s no need to slip out of Peter Greenaway’s golden nightshirt yet. And now that we are no longer seated in the darkened cinema, we, too, can flail our limbs about like Eisenstein charged by Prokofiev. Let us relish movement (no more siting! Hurrah!). And let us dream a little longer as we draw up a list of top ten films in no particular order.

Top ten
In the Crosswind
Angels of Revolution (please, can I see that again?)
Corn Island
Volcano
Song of the Sea
My Love, Don’t Cross That River
Listen to Me, Marlon
Mustang
Eisenstein in Guanajuato
Mediterranea

With notable mentions to
Tehran Taxi
The Pearl Button
The Treasure
Koza
Body
The High Sun
The Postman’s White Nights
Theeb
Sworn Virgin
Land and Shade
Tyke Elephant Outlaw
Cemetery of Splendour
Under Electric Clouds
The Thoughts That Once We Had
The Spiderwebhouse
Racing Extinction

(Nope, I’ve never been a list maker.) 

Total minutes of footage seen
4, 907

Best cat/s and dog/s in a film
In one deft swoop, best cat/s of MIFF2015 AND best winged! dog/s of MIFF2015 found in Angels of Revolution (with apologies to Fredek and co., and close your ears, Lenni)

Ah, MIFF. You were Debra Paget and I was the snake. Charmed. (The Indian Tomb (Das indische Grabmal) 1959).

And because all visual lists once started ought be completed, the remaining films seen, gathered in the one place.

Films 28 through 50


{Film 28, LISTEN TO ME MARLON (D Stevan Riley)}


{Film 29, BODY (D Malgorzata Szumowska)}


{Film 30, THE HIGH SUN (D Dalibor Matanic)}


{Film 31, TALES (D Rakhshan Bani-Etemad)}


{Film 32, THEEB (D Naji Abu Nowar)}


{Film 33, HILL OF FREEDOM (D Hong Sang-soo) (screened alongside Voilà l'enchaînement by Claire Denis)}


{Film 34, SWORN VIRGIN (D Laura Bispuri)}


{Film 35, PIONEER HEROES (D Natalya Kudryashova)}


{Film 36, ONE FLOOR BELOW (D Radu Muntean)}


{Film 37, ANGELS OF REVOLUTION (D Alexey Fedorchenko)}


{FIlm 38, KOZA (D Ivan Ostrochovsky)}


{Film 39, MELBOURNE (D Nima Javidi)}


{Film 40, DON'T TELL ME THE BOY WAS MAD (Une Histoire d'un fou) (D Robert Guédiguan)}


{Film 41, MEDITERRANEA (D Jonas Carpignano)}


{Film 42, LOUDER THAN BOMBS (D Joachim Trier)}


{Film 43, THE TREASURE (D Corneliu Porumboiu)}


{Film 44, LI WEN AT EAST LAKE (D Luo Li)}


{Film 45, THESE ARE THE RULES (Takva su pravila) (D Ognjen Sviličić)}


{Film 46, EISENSTEIN IN GUANAJUATO (D Peter Greenaway)}


{Film 47, TEA TIME (La Once) (D Maite Alberdi)}


{Film 48, IN THE CROSSWIND (D Martti Helde)}


{Film 49, THE PEARL BUTTON (El botón de nácar) (D Patricio Guzmán)}


{Film 50, OUR LITTLE SISTER (D Hirokazu Kore-eda)}

See you next year!

NB: Young Sergeyev’s red and blue mouse t-shirt: where can I find one?

“The shadow escapes from the body like an animal we had been sheltering.”

I've tipped over the halfway mark and I am now swinging towards a neat fifty by way of a makeshift big top (Spartacus & Cassandra) and the tragic truth of poor performing Tyke the African elephant (Tyke Elephant Outlaw). I've wandered through Chernobyl's exclusion zone and made a red wine offering (The Russian Woodpecker), and later penned countless confused love letters in a café (My Golden Days). You didn't cliché did you? Oh!

Along the way, I've heard the last of a species call for a mate, and I've hung my head in shame and dismay at the things we humans have done and continue to do (Racing Extinction), yet left the cinema feeling empowered to affect change. In colour and pattern, I've near circled a volcano (in a beautiful festival highlight, The Volcano), and taken comfort in a families' expressed tenderness. Ash, rubble, reconstruction. Night and Day. Top hat, white tie, and 'tales'. All in a day. Symmetry. The silent film. The close-up. All gathered. The graceful Fred Astaire reappeared, and sang about coffee (The Thoughts That Once We Had) before giving way to a snake charmer or was that the Marx Brothers? Hank Ballard and Lillian Gish. Brecht and blues. Laurel and Hardy, and Charlie Chaplin too, they were all in there, woven through a moving collage I'd very much like to try my hand at. Lo! Look sharp! There's Peggy and the Surrealists. That idea will have to wait. Paris in the '20s with Monsieur Duchamp, how fine you did look (Peggy Guggenheim — Art Addict).

Cough, splutter, wheeze. A tiny house surrounded by a burning sugarcane plantation (Land and Shade).  Mythological selkies with large black eyes, where can I find you again (Song of the Sea)? Seascapes, sad tales, fables and song. May I present, a second harvest of visuals especially for you.

Click your heels and say yeah! Fifty here we come!


{Film 14, SPARTACUS & CASSANDRA (D Ioanis Nuguet)}


{Film 15, THE RUSSIAN WOODPECKER (D Chad Gracia)}


{Film 16, MY GOLDEN DAYS (D Arnaud Desplechin)}


{Film 17, THE VOLCANO (D Jayro Bustamante)}


{Film 18, PHOENIX (D Christian Petzold)}


{Tap, tap, tappity-tap. Adrian Wootton Talks Hollywood Legends, MIFF 2015 event, Fred Astaire — Tapping from Top Hat to living colour}


{Film 19, LA SAPIENZA (D Eugène Green)}


{Film 20, PEGGY GUGGENHEIM — ART ADDICT (D Lisa Immordino Vreeland)}

{Film 21, RACING EXTINCTION (D Louie Psihoyos)}


{Film 22, 1001 GRAMS (D Bent Hamer)}


{Film 23, TYKE ELEPHANT OUTLAW (D Stefan Moore, Susan Lambert)}


{Film 24, FEHÉRLÓFIA (D Marcell Jankovics)}


{Film 25, THE THOUGHTS THAT ONCE WE HAD (D Thom Andersen)}


{Film 26, SONG OF THE SEA (D Tomm Moore)}


{Film 27, LAND AND SHADE (La Tierra y la Sombra) (D César Acevado)}

Life, it's better on film.

(“The shadow escapes from the body like an animal we had been sheltering.” ―Gilles Deleuze (quoted throughout the 'wordless' musical film, The Stories That Once We Had), Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation)

Slowly, tenderly.

Cherry blossoms and birdsong; a South Korean tin house lit like a lantern; snow and bright satin, hand in hand; a nonchalant Russian Blue cat atop a wardrobe, seated before a mirror making him or herself an icon seen only by a Postman; a dwelling constructed on an island; a full moon framed by a window. A baker’s dozen of neither rolls nor bean-filled pancakes (dorayaki hunger pangs in Naomi Kawase’s An), but films I have seen so far at this year’s MIFF. Circular keepsakes from each film to later jog my memory. A traditional harvest of places and people, beginning with the black and white fabled land of soul birds and modern-day dwarves in need of stovetops (somewhere in Germany) in Mara Eibl-Eibesfeldt’s The Spiderwebhouse and concluding on an island of fertile soil before it is washed away on the border between Georgia and Abkhazia in George Ovashvili’s Corn Island (easily my favourite film to date, for what it’s worth). So far, I have looked for and savoured the glint of optimism in each tale and documentary. I have taken comfort in the tenderness maximised in Jin Mo-young’s My Love, Don’t Cross that River and on offer in a person held in Under Electric Clouds and a person consoled in Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Cemetery of Splendour. Spirit animals; bodies of water like glass, and illicit swims (The Second Mother and Mustang); recurring motifs emerge and leave me but a husk as all the big life stuff is laid bare. Love, loss, and hardship. Growing up, and growing older. More please.


{Film 1, THE SPIDERWEBHOUSE (D Mara Eibl-Eibesfeldt)}


{Film 2, UNDER ELECTRIC CLOUDS (D Alexey German Jr)}


{Film 3, THE SECOND MOTHER (D Anna Muylaert)}


{Film 4, MUSTANG (D Deniz Gamze Ergüven)}


{Film 5, IRIS (D Albert Maysles)}


{Film 6, THE POSTMAN'S WHITE NIGHTS (D Andrei Konchalovsky)}


{Film 7, TEHRAN TAXI (D Jafar Panahi)}


{Film 8, CEMETERY OF SPLENDOUR (D Apichatpong Weerasethakul)}


{Film 9, MY LOVE, DON'T CROSS THAT RIVER (D Jin Mo-young)}


{Film 10, A PERFECT DAY (D Fernando Leon de Aranoa)}


{Film 11, AN (D Naomi Kawase)}


{Film 12, GAYBY BABY (D Maya Newell)}


{Film 13, CORN ISLAND (D George Ovashvili)}

The ordinary object, elevated.

{Sarah Aiken in SET (Image credit: Gregory Lorenzutti)}


{A String Section (Image credit: Inteatro/Guido Calamosca)}

With saws and cardboard tubes, The Creative Act, two works recently seen and responded to for Fjord Review. (Thanks Penelope. It's always a pleasure taking you in my pocket.)

A String Section
Reckless Sleepers (Belgium/UK) with Nat Cursio Co. (Australia)
Saturday, 18^th July 2015
Bagging Room, Coopers Malthouse Theatre

Concept, Choreographer, Performer: Leen Dewilde
Direction: Mole Wetherell
Collaborators, Performers: Nat Cursio, Alice Dixon, Caroline Meaden, Chimene Steele-Prior

SET
Sarah Aiken
Friday, 24^th July 2015
Sylvia Staehli Theatre, Dancehouse

Concept, Choreographer, Performer, Set design: Sarah Aiken
Creative collaborator, Sound design, Performer, Set design: Daniel Arnott
Lighting design and operation: Amelia Lever-Davidson
Object design and construction: Matthew Adey/House of Vnholy
Stage management: Canada White

A single bicycle wheel upturned and mounted upon a stool (Bicycle Wheel, 1951, third version, after lost original of 1913). A snow shovel (In Advance of the Broken Arm, 1964, fourth version, after lost original of 1915). A painted window (Fresh Window, 1920). When Marcel Duchamp placed a mass produced 'readymade' before us and disrupted how we thought about and interpreted art, the "ordinary object [was] elevated to the dignity of a work of art by the mere choice of an artist."[i]

The objects were important not because of what they were, but because they were selected by the artist. Removed from their ordinary function and thereby striped of their usage, the object became art. With the integral addition of the onlooker witnessing the work and responding to it, the 'readymade' "created a new thought for [the particular] object.”[ii] We, the spectators, in accepting the role of transference through the act of looking, choose what we see in Duchamp's 'readymades'. Under our gaze, objects can take on entirely new and obscure meanings[iii].

To my mind, following this train of thought, both Reckless Sleepers with Nat Cursio’s performance of A String Section (2012) and Sarah Aiken's SET (2015), celebrate the utilitarian object, redefining its role and how we regard it. After all, 'readymade' (tout-fait) is a homophone for 'to-make' (tu fait); it is up to you to make of it what you will.

A free, one night only performance of Leen Dewilde's A String Section, as part of a seemingly perfect exchange between the Belgium/UK based company, Reckless Sleepers, and current Coopers Malthouse resident, Nat Cursio Co., released the humble handsaw from its place in the tool shed. Coupled with a timber chair to chew through, it became a musical instrument for 50 minutes in the Bagging Room of the Malthouse Theatre. A musical instrument wielded by Cursio, Dewilde, Alice Dixon, Caroline Meaden, and Chimene Steele-Prior, who proceeded to reduce the functional to sawdust. As befits an orchestral quintet, each performer wore a black dress and neat heels. And in their hands, each held their bow, an orange-handled saw. Their instrument: a wooden chair (varying quality and style). Their invitation extended: "watch [an] object have its history changed in front of you."[iv] Embracing the idea of the 'readymade', I was free to redefine the object’s role and thereby ascribe my own meaning.

From my external world, I brought to 'the creative act', my own sensitivity and humour. And as with Cursio's Tiny Slopes work-in-progress teaser, seen earlier in the year as part of Dance Massive 2015, I saw my own self in the actions of the performers as opposed to laughing at them and their attempts to saw a chair leg whilst remaining seated or crouched on the chair. I wondered if they were ever tempted to pick up their chairs and break the limbs through force as opposed to the slow snuggle-toothed slog of back and forth with a handsaw. I imagined what it would be like to be a part of this work:

Imagine sitting on a chair. Lean forward, keeping your feet on the ground, if you wish, and commence sawing with your preferred hand at one of the two front legs. You may wish to hop off the chair and saw, or to place the chair on a workbench, but this is not permitted. You must saw the chair leg whilst balanced on the chair. You will need to move your own body weight in order to do this. You will need to contort your form. You may extend a leg outward and hold it in the air for balance like a prehensile tail. You will probably find this awkward. And this is only the first step. The teeth of your saw may catch. This is to be expected. Work through this. Keep going. In 50 minutes, your task is to reduce the chair to pieces and sawdust. In this period, you will have turned the functional into something useless. You will have transformed an object into nothingness. For this, you may have a blister to show for your labour. You may also have a sweaty brow. Your black orchestra pit attire will be covered in fine powder. You will have reduced a beautiful timber chair to crumbs, but given it a great finale. The sound your saw made as you worked, your music, and the struggle of the task, reflective of the artistic process. In a grandiose moment, you may have reinterpreted the words of Théophile Gautier as you thought: "There is nothing really beautiful save what is of no possible use". In the end, it all ends up scrap.

I responded to the determination and conviction of the performers as I read my own frustrations in their labour. I admired their balance on their wonky-legged rafts, and devoured their deadpan humour. This work, to me, was about strength in all its guises: strength to continue, to pursue your own goals, a recognition of the hard slog of getting things done. Watching the performers adapt to their seats as they became increasingly unsteady, to me, was a picture of the creative act in all its warty (or is that dusty?) glory. But if the mundane and the functional can became a musical instrument, so too can a hardship become a victory. All too often it is from this standing that new ideas can be explored. Shifting positions throws up not just challenges, but new perceptions. And this idea of how things look and how things are was also woven into Dancehouse Housemate/artist in residence Aiken's new work, SET, which looked to “distort and manipulate bodies and objects to playfully reimagine perspective."[v]

Comprised of three vignettes, as with A String Section, it was shown that you could lose your footing and regain it. A dancer can alter their proportions in such a way to transform from a gangly giraffe unsure of where their limbs end (when standing upright) to a broken timepiece (when rotating clockwise on the floor) with the aid of four long cardboard cylinders. With all four limbs encased in tubes, lying on her back, legs and arms extended upwards, Aiken shape-shifted and became a piece of unworldly and unyielding seaweed. But the greatest transformation took place in the second vignette when Aiken made herself appear, through overlaid projections, no taller than a black coffee mug.

Projected onto a large white piece of fabric cut out in the shape of a giant glove, which had been slowly winched into place, what we see and what we know was tested. The projected image appeared to be a live playback of the stage to the left of the giant glove. So far, so surreal, both projected image and stage appeared in cahoots. There, the black coffee mug, and over there, the single white sneaker. In keeping with the monochrome, over there, a grey plastic elephant. Atop this accepted visual, a second appeared, that of a shrunken Aiken wandering through the assorted miscellanea. A digital collage, Aiken was rendered the size of the forms she negotiated. Upon the makeshift screen, how I read scale had been cleverly (though not seamlessly) altered. The toy elephant, on screen, had assumed actual size. My eyes took in the visual conjurer’s trick and flitted back and forth from the altered reality of the screen to the 'real' scene. Several yoga-like poses undertaken in the far left of the room on the lip of an existing stage seemed unremarkable, but looking back at the screen this was actually the exact area inside the black mug. It gave the impression of Aiken as a genie in a bottle, a performer in a coffee mug undertaking their morning asanas. Distorting scale and toying with my perception, this simple illusion was one of the strengths of the piece.

Given the opportunity to complete both pieces through my own willingness to engage, the transference between performer/work and audience/spectator was completed. Through an unspoken dialogue, I, like those seated around me, became a transfixed part of A String Section. Through audience participation, we became, quite literally, the missing slow-shuffling link in SET, as Nick Cave crooned Into My Arms and the disco ball twinkled. In the middle of winter, armed with saws, chairs, and cardboard tubes, everything was related and connected, as we attempted to put art back "in the service of the mind"[vi]. Since then, I have been left with a hankering to saw at the very foundations I sit on whilst my limbs are encased in cardboard cylinders; I couldn’t have asked for more.

Notes:
[i] Marcel Duchamp, as quoted in The Art of Assemblage: A Symposium, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 19^th October, 1961.
[ii] "Whether Mr Mutt with his own hands made the fountain or not has no importance. He CHOSE it. He took an ordinary article of life, and placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view — created a new thought for that object." — An anonymous editorial published in an issue of The Blind Man, May 1917, a magazine published by Duchamp and friends.
[iii] "The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act." — Marcel Duchamp, 'The Creative Act', The Writings of Marcel Duchamp, ed. Michel Sanouillet and Elmer Peterson, New York: Da Capo, 1973, p. 140.
[iv] Mole Wetherell, A String Section statement, Reckless Sleepers website, accessed 19^th July, 2015.
[v] Sarah Aiken, SET statement, Dancehouse programme, Friday 24^th July, 2015.
[vi] Marcel Duchamp, as quoted in H. H. Arnason and Marla F. Prather, History of Modern Art: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Photography (fourth edition), New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1998, p. 274.

{A String Section Polverigi (section close up) from Reckless Sleepers. Performed by Leen Dewilde, Caroline D’Haese, Lisa Kendall, Orla Shine and Rachel Rimmer. Made with support of INTEATRO Creative Residency.}

{SET teaser from Dancehouse, Melbourne.}

Big. Little. Whoa.

{FRIDAY. Earlier today, stowaway nurse Lenni nipped into the hospital to check on the dear patient. (Rest up, dear Louise. XO)}


{SATURDAY. Today, nurse Percy is on the ward. (Thank-you for all your kind messages, good thoughts, and well wishes, dear friends. You have lifted the patient's spirits immensely. As with yesterday's Lenni in a bag, this visual charm is but an idea, with apologies to @milly_sleeping, @cottageindustrystore, and company. XO)}


{SATURDAY, UP CLOSE. Extreme closeup. Because: paws crossed, people. Paws are crossed.}


{SUNDAY: Hurrah! Hurrah! Louise is coming home. Let's go, Olive! (The final in the 'I Wish' series, with apologies once more to @milly_sleeping, @a.shari.a, @cottageindustrystore, and others. XO)}


{SUNDAY, INTERRUPTED. Thank-you, dear friends and family, for all you love and kindness. One more, just because. One more, with Lenni photobombing shy Olive's moment. Happy, soggy Sunday, one and all.}

This time last week, final steps were being undertaken on the eve of Louise's visit to hospital for a total hysterectomy to remove a large fibroid mass some 17cm in diameter*. Since then, my heart has been put in a mangle and held there, and given the mechanics of the body, my head and body with it. Such things are taxing for the Home Front committee, and Worry, a little like its near neighbour Grief, is a weighty beast that leaves you feeling flattened and tired. This time last week, naturally, feels a lot longer than its seven days and seven nights, but I am happy to report that the patient is on the mend. Recovery is proving as slow as we’d been forewarned, and the healing process will not be rushed. Thank-you to everyone who called, messaged, tweeted, conversed on instagram and facebook, and sent care packages by post. It has meant so very much, and should ever something similar arise, I will make good my promise of sneaking in Lenni, Percy, and Olive to lift Louise’s spirits.

To feeling well! To feeling whole! To more of the good bits!

* For those of you who love a medical tidbit, or just in case you are curious, said mass weighed a whopping 1kg! Can you believe it? Louise asked the surgeon how much it weighed at yesterday's follow up appointment, and I think he enjoyed figuring out the weight. Odd questions, he explained, are the best kind.


{THURSDAY. Lenni has this nursing caper licked.}


{THURSDAY, CONTINUED. A little time with scissors in hand. (#theworkingtable) }

Then. (This recent moving parts collage of three autochromed ladies in Tripoli sums up neatly how some days feel. You too?)

 

Somewhat underwhelmed.

A video posted by Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison (@gracialouise) on Jul 5, 2015 at 10:28pm PDT

Now. (Yeah!)

 

Louise is home at last. And the pets and I, we look like this. #feelslike (Image credit: John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle, 1950)

A video posted by Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison (@gracialouise) on Jul 11, 2015 at 9:55pm PDT

+ #MIFF2015, we are ready for you. (From Gaston Velle’s La Fée aux Fleurs (1905).)
+ Two @melbfilmfest guides, two #MIFF2015 passports, two Merry Cupcakes, two highlighters: Wednesday's beautiful inventory.

+ Good news! Hurrah! Repost from @geelonggallery:
"SHORTLIST ANNOUNCED — 2015 Geelong acquisitive print awards
Geelong Gallery is delighted to announce that 42 works by 44 leading and emerging Australian artists have been shortlisted for the '2015 Geelong acquisitive print awards'. Showcasing the best of contemporary Australian printmaking practice, the acquisitive awards and biennial exhibition will feature works by Rosalind Atkins, Susan Baran, Alexis Beckett, Deidre Brollo, Peter Burgess, Jon Campbell, Sophie Cape, Julie Davies & Alex Rizkalla, Mark Dustin, Lesley Duxbury, David Frazer, Mini Graff, Rona Green, Andrew Gunnell, Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison, Robert Hague, Katherine Hattam, Peter Hill, Anita Iacovella, Locust Jones, William Kelly, Martin King, Timothy Maguire, Marion Manifold, Nonggirrnga Marawili, Daniel Moynihan, Graeme Peebles, Stieg Persson, Ben Rak, Martin Rek, Geoffrey Ricardo, Brian Robinson, John Ryrie, Olga Sankey, Ken Smith, Colin Vickery, Wayne Viney, Judy Watson, Peter Ward, Darren Wardle, Stephen Wickham and Joel Wolter."

Omnium gatherum.

omnium gatherum |ˌɒmnɪəm ˈgaðərəm|
noun
a collection of miscellaneous things.

Because I cannot recall what I have and have not posted, popping up on a quiet eve with one or two things new, considerably less new, and of possible interest (to all but the Pallas cat (Felis manul), it would seem).



By the lake. Our spur-of-the-moment #FarewellMadeleine collage especially for The Australian Ballet, featuring Madeleine Eastoe as Odette and artists of The Australian Ballet in Graeme Murphy's Swan Lake.

Schiaparelli shoe hats at the ready, a piece on Alexei Ratmansky's Cinderella (seen twice in the one season!) is also coming soon to Fjord Review.

(Past love, revisited.)


In the borrowed costume for the Bluebird from The sleeping princess, designed by Léon Bakst, c 1921, with a Laughing Kookaburra (Dacelo novaeguineae), 2015, collage on carte de visite with pencil additions, with accompanying lino print title card.

Until Thursday the 9th of July, you can see six tiny pieces by Louise and me as part of Port Jackson Press Print Gallery's winter salon.

Port Jackson Press Print Gallery, 84 Smith Street, Collingwood



A Deck of Salvaged Relatives, 2015,  artists' book, unique state, featuring 26 individual collages on carte de visite with pencil and paint additions (by Gracia Haby) with 26 accompanying lino print title cards, housed in a linen Solander box (bound by Louise Jennison) with inlaid collages.

You can download the latest edition of CFPR Book Arts newsletter (issue 98), and find our animals and Salvaged Relatives nestled on pages 26, and 32 through 33.

Rewinding time, you can find us in the library, in conversation, and as printed resource.

And you can find a selection of our cards and zines at Solander Gallery in New Zealand.

As new work assumes form, keep your good eye on our instagram feed for updates (and white rabbits).