ACMI: Future Manifestos

My decade at university pursuing an arts education grounded me in the significance of manifestos. But I haven't really thought too much about them since the early noughties. You know, too busy earning a crust and keeping myself and my brood clean and fed to be pouring over declarative sentences with a call to action (though domestic routine does take me to a rage-full place and in alignment with a midlife crisis a couple of years back things got pretty close to revolutionary). But I got invited to the ACMI /RN talks Sunday 13 March on the topic and I thought 'What the heck!' There must still be room for Ideas in life, right?

Outside ACMI it was one great thrill ride. Moomba, people throwing themselves off bridges, ferris wheels, overstuffed soft toys and jam donuts. Inside studio 1 it was a more serious affair. I enjoyed the intro into manifestos by a proper academic - it was scholarly, engaging, detailed - before Paul Barclay (Big Ideas, RN) took to the stage with broadcaster and author Jeff Sparrow and early career researcher Max Halupka talking Political Activism. How much do we hear and how much do we see? I saw a very warm, smart and competent compere. Jeff Sparrow looked hungover, a tiny bit hostile and not impressed with his sparring parter: Max Halupka. It was like watching a wolf and a peacock. Sparrow was taking things back to the Enlightenment. Halupka was excited by politics in the age of Twitter.

Next up was Professor Anne Marsh and Clementine Ford for a 30 minute bout on Feminism. This session was tricky for Barclay: the ghost of himself as a young man navigating second wave feminism, at a guess. Marsh was very sure of herself and clearly persuaded by the importance of universities in being the epicentre of good ideas (apparently gender politics is really influenced by Deluze's ideas on sexuality right now - though pretty sure he wrote about them forty years ago). I'll probably read about it in a watered down first person confessional story that is so popular in The Age sometime next year. Ford was less certain of herself. She may have been intimidated by the context and who can blame her. I read her writing regularly and I got a better sense of her project and method: call it like it is and then throw a spotlight on the misogynistic men that troll her.

Last up Amanda McKenzie (Climate Council, CEO) and Guy Abrahams (CLIMEART) took to the stage to discuss Environment and Sustainability. Away from the mucky bizness of men versus women, I felt like the room brighten. Sure, the planet and it's demise was at stake but Abrahams brought a very expressive pair of hands to explain how art could make a difference. McKenzie brought a sense of purpose. They steered the conversation to Paris and the Climate Talks. Both had been present for them. It was in their session and this moment that the Future Manifesto's event found momentum. Trading anecdotes of the Paris Metro, billboards and delegates from far-flung places sitting down to discuss the future of carbon emissions and targets they built something - a story that held hope for the future - together.

Festivities/War

I'm tapping this out at my dining table surrounded by the detritus of Christmas a little overloaded, over excited and more than a bit over it. I am staggered by the amount of social obligation sandwiched between work responsibilities not to mention a host of free floating ideas from early 2015 that want to assert themselves right now, propelled by a motor that seems entirely independent of my conscious will.

Even as things get hectic both internally and externally I am finding myself undertaking a process of reflection of the year just past (hard-as). Rather than filling me with any particular sorrow, I am mostly overwhelmed by my sense of gratitude for good friends and the enormous care and love that has been shown to me and my peeps (hospital visitors, you especially). Amazingly, there's still been time and inclination for celebration. The very best moment  has been hosting a bbq for family and close friends this past week in the dustbowl of our backyard (water colour scene above captured by guest and artist Piers Lumley).

The kids were the best. Fresh memories of children snaking out the kitchen patiently waiting for a scoop of ice cream in a cone have been keeping me strong through Christmas elf duties that involve malls and the CBD and the mail which includes the Medican Sans Frontiers magazine Pulse. This issue opens with an editorial about the Coalition forces bombing of the hospital in Kunduz, Afghanastan. Honestly, fuck those cunts and the havoc they wreck.

Depreston

On Friday I heard Courtney Barnett's single 'Depreston' for the first time. I know what you're thinking. Am I living under some kind of rock? I'm last to hear anything and everything, my music know-how so low, since my car radio is tuned to Fox, PBS and Radio National depending on my companions and my own state of mind.

I'd been hearing good things about Barnett's album and its barnstorming ways up charts here and in the States so my response to hearing her now award-winning song surprised me. I liked it but I think I expected a bigger song, instrumentally and its canvas, though press articles about the "telling detail" in her writing should have alerted me to the fact that specificity – being attuned to the spaces, places and emotional texture of life at this point in time as a 30something north sider – is her thing. She sings about going to an open for inspection in the now gentrified former working class suburb of Preston with a light, comic touch, though the subtext of the song is economics.  I wondered whether 'Depreston' has struck a chord with people because of its truthfulness: on the subject of Preston we are in total agreement.

In life we are rarely given the opportunity to feel into another person's inner world, even our family and friends remain essentially mysterious. That inner world is the place where working life intersects with intimacy and love, the place where our bank balance and our aspirations face one another. This is the the land of self-talk, a patter that veers between hopefulness and resignation that circles around questions of self-worth and the material. Some days it veers off towards questions of security and safety, other days it strays towards worries over power and influence but it always begins and ends with the question: how much is enough?

Louisa Bufardeci: The Sea Between A and I

Louisa Bufardeci's exhibition The Sea Between A and I (as in Australia and Indonesia) opened on Saturday at Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne. The artworks – all needlepoint on a fibreglass screen – make reference to maritime disasters, sunken boats and the plight of desperate people risking their lives to make the perilous journey across the seas. Bufardeci has used Google Earth to pinpoint the precise coordinates of eight of these tragedies and crafted intense and abstract forms in gradations of blue. They invoke the swirl of meteorological matter, weather charts and thermal imaging, though in this instance in place of heat associated with living, breathing organisms  these works speak of the opposite – death itself.

The real events described in Bufardeci's artworks felt very far away on that sunny Saturday afternoon. I felt very graciously welcomed into the gallery where I was not only offered a Campari after climbing the stairs but the monkeys even had a room set aside for art making. I was surrounded by some pretty lovely people, some of whom I knew. The opening speaker, human rights lawyer David Manne gave a considered, moving address. It was long sure, though not overly, and given the subject matter it felt appropriate: my legs were bearing less stress than the asylum seekers. Manne drew on statistics on the number of displaced persons around the world, recounted the lack of detail in reporting of asylum seeker journeys and drew a line between that and the abstracted language of Bufardeci's needlepoints. For someone who admitted he hadn't written about art since year 11, to my eye some twenty five years earlier, it was a perceptive observation.

If you are wondering whether there is a market for these kind of works, the entire show sold to the NGV before the exhibition opened. Not only was the work well crafted, but topical. I felt very pleased for the artist with whom I share a personal connection (we both have girls in the same class at school). It was only afterwards, on the journey home that I felt growing ambivalence. The work and its backstory forces us to consider uncomfortable truths about the country we live in and the world at large. But in the space that opens up afterwards, what resides there other than Guilt and Shame, and possibly Anger. Is there anything wrong with turning tragedy into art and those art objects into dollars? Is it worse to not make that art? Does not making the art only mirror the silence that characterises the government and media on this 'issue'. I just don't know.

Louisa Bufardeci
The Sea Between A and I
17 October - 11 November 2015
Anna Schwartz Gallery
185 Flinders Lane, Melbourne

The Right To Know

This week I sat in front of 20 Preps studying Journeys and told them the story of our family's migration to Australia from Poland when I was precisely their age. I had their rapt attention. It's that kind of story, which includes our family separated across continents, my father's trip by boat to Africa, my mother's escape from Poland with four small children over the mountains in an unreliable car and our eventual reunion in Vienna before the long journey by plane to Australia. 

My own background as a refugee was one of the reasons I was so glad to participate in Red Cross' exhibition, The Right To Know, which tells eight stories of family separation and reunion thanks to the efforts of the Red Cross Tracing Service. It's difficult not to be moved by the stories of sadness, longing and loss told so achingly concisely. 

Designer Cate Hall and I worked on the project out of her backyard studio calling out measurements to each other against a background of children's voices, and Cate's large, doleful black rabbit hopping silently around the yard.

It was the beginning of winter. There was a birth – beautiful Nina in Adelaide – and the shock of Otto's diagnosis of diabetes to contend with the week the artwork was due at the printers. To be honest I was grateful for the chance to lose myself in meaningful work. I laid out photographs of Emmanuel – his warm, positive and dignified face – alongside quotes that were horrifying in their meaning. His story begins: "I was only 14 years old when my family members were killed, when I witnessed that mass killing." 

Moving graphic elements around millimetre by millimetre in Illustrator and changing pixels sizes in Photoshop, I felt fate's cruel hand: good and bad fortune, historical and geographical forces. What choice do we have but to keep moving forward one foot in front of the other? 

The Right To Know

Immigration Museum

400 Flinders Street, Melbourne

Until 25 October 2015

www.sweetpolka.com

www.catehall.com.au

Winter Solstice

It must be the steely grey mornings that have me longing for colour. I know Melbourne is not Siberia but I am a complete winter sook. I want to be warm, snug and within an arms reach of hot chocolate at all times. But I try and remind myself that winter has an upside which is an effortless introspectiveness that at other times of year, as an excitable Gemini, I have to really strive to connect with. That introspectiveness slows my thinking to just a pip above hibernation speed. I feel able to undertake slower projects, projects like weaving that demand patience and stamina. 

The last time I tried my hand at weaving was 1993 in the Silesia region of Poland. Outside the manor in which I was staying smoke stacks dirtied the air (remember acid rain?). Inside its four walls I was trying to evoke a cheerier landscape. It wasn't a success. But I'm willing to have another crack at the art and craft of weaving next month and put my inexperienced hands in the hands of Victorian Tapestry Workshop founder Sara Lindsay. She'll be running a two day workshop, over consecutive Saturdays in July at Pop craft. 

The Story of Us

Five years ago I was holding an infant Hazel and had a whirling dervish of a son who was crazy about Lego. I think it was Stevie who came home one day with something to show us – a blog titled Leo’s Lego Lab. It was a delightful document of creativity; Leo, aged five at the time, posted various Lego creations with the help of his mum. I remember liking this little kid, and the world captured in his blog. I felt an immediate sense of kinship with his mum. When I read that Leo had taken a break from blogging with the arrival of his little sister Hazel – who not only shared the same name but was the same age as mine – I just knew we were fated for friendship. Other than a vague sense that this crew were Melbourne based I really had nothing to go on. We continued to read Leo’s blog. Hazel learned to crawl.

At the tail end of summer we celebrated a friend’s sixth birthday in the Edinburgh Gardens. The playground was a mangle of kids when Otto found himself in a confusing disagreement with a mum about Hazel. I've got a Hazel, he said. I've got a Hazel, she replied. There were two Hazels. That mum turned out to be the tough, smart, creative and highly original Emma G.

In the years since Otto and Leo have developed a strong friendship. The Hazel's, not so much. Emma and I have drunk our fair share of tea mostly over her kitchen table. Of all of his friends Leo's home is the one in which Otto feels most comfortable. I sometimes wonder whether Otto senses the common thread between us; a life that revolves around art, music, books and family.

Driving down Sydney Road after a play at Leo's last weekend Otto and Hazel asked me to tell them once again the story of how we came to meet Leo and his family, the one recounted here. We started at the beginning. They love to tell it, hear it and add to it. We think of it as the story of us.

------
Photo of my feet and Emma's shoes by Emma Byrnes. She belongs in this story too. It was her daughter's birthday that we were attending that fateful day in the Ed Gardens.

Brent Harris: Dreamer

There's no contemporary Australian artist I admire more than Brent Harris. Is there another artist as inventive, courageous, surprising and plain well skilled? Can't think of one. Sometimes when someone has had such a consistent, prolific practice – and Harris has exhibited prodigiously for 30 years – it's difficult to know where to begin? As an artist who has worked across printmaking and painting there's a lot to account for. I'm not going to attempt it here (though keep an eye out for a forthcoming article by M Zagala – she's putting some ideas together on Harris' printmaking in long form). If Harris' current exhibition is anything to go by he is in the rare situation of being both a critical and commercial success.

Dreamer is a beautiful exhibition. I liked the hang that positioned Harris' small canvases close to Tolarno's gallery entry. They have a vignette-like quality, a shifting plane of figurative and abstract elements that recall the figure groupings of religious Italian Renaissance paintings by way of Turner. Harris' brush work is a riveting combination of flat scrubbed back surfaces overlaid with buttery paint strokes. But Harris' real gift to the viewer is the way in which he brings the process to the fore. There is a sense of chance, discovery and serendipity articulated in the compositions that might appear tentative but actually reflect Harris' enormous experience.

In the larger canvases whimsical faces emerge, some tiny little proto-beings,  not more than graphic linear gestures animated by cartoon-like eyes. I was intrigued by the different propositions contained in single works – late 19th century landscape traditions, psychedelic colours, and the human form. In all the paintings it's the human figure – searching, fugitive – that lend these abstracted landscapes a slightly unsettling quality. In them the spectre of the unconscious hovers like an inky presence drawing together the complex spheres of the social, sexual and religious.

Brent Harris
Dreamer
12 February - 4 April 2015
www.tolarnogalleries.com

Images courtesy of Tolarno Galleries

Trente Parke - The Black Rose

Last week I flew to Adelaide for the opening of the Trent Parke exhibition, The Black Rose, at the Art Gallery of South Australia. The exhibition, co-curated by Maria Zagala and Julie Robinson had been a topic of daily conversation between my twin and I for months, if not years.  There was no way I was going to miss it. Sharing my life with two curators I’ve come to understand that every now and again – and it’s really not that often – curator and exhibition subject connect in a powerful way.  I had a feeling that this was that kind of show.

A few things pointed in this direction: Trent Parke’s remarkable personal story, the project’s ambition (only seven years in the making) and the scale of the exhibition (carte blanche to the entire temporary exhibition space). In his early thirties, and newly a father, Parke’s thoughts turned to the traumatic memory of his mother’s sudden and unexpected death from an asthma attack when he was 13 years old. The exhibition charts Parke’s odyssey – an epic emotional, cosmic and vast geographical journey – undertaken with his own young family across the country and ending at his childhood home in Newcastle, NSW. Documenting birth, death, and the everyday banalities of suburban life, Parke and the exhibition curators have collated a selection of the thousands of mostly black and white photographs, in addition to multimedia and installation works, into a series of self-contained rooms that articulated the exhibitions themes.

Apart from the visual material, Parke wrote some 15,000 words to accompany the project: a diaristic collection of notes, recollections, dreams and observation, some of which appear on the walls and as part of the exhibition catalogue. These form an interesting adjunct to the visual works. The photographs, all formally exquisite and technically precise recall the documentary style of iconic mid 20^th century magazines like Life.  (Parke is Australia’s only Magnum photographer – a difficult feat and rare honour). Parke acknowledges that he is not a writer in the short film that introduces the exhibition, and reiterates the statement in the catalogue despite identifying as a storyteller. His prose –  unabashedly pulpy and overwrought – is everywhere.  Parke’s widely divergent skills as a artist and writer had an interesting effect. I literally flipped between Amazing! and Terrible! every second step. The juxtaposition of very different modes – professional and amateur – added a compelling dimension to the exhibition. For Parke, this project was a total excavation.  

Parke’s exhausting and exhaustive search for meaning by way of documentary, vernacular and theatrical form powerfully conveys the messy, dislocating experience of trauma. At the exhibitions end I was in awe of Parke’s capacity for risk – emotional, professional and financial. It seemed to me the definition of courage.

Trent Parke, Black Butterfly from The Black Rose, 2014 gelatin silver hand print 120 x 152cm

The Black Rose

Art Gallery of South Australia

14 March – 10 May 2015

I ❤ heartland projects

This week I've been going through the process of having my folio documented by Heartland Projects lead creative Emma Byrnes. This lady is amazing. I have always loved working on projects in collaboration – that's essentially why I am a designer – but once the project is at its completion, even if I am very happy with the outcome I'm usually left experiencing a little mort. Some light switches off inside of me. Good night. Documenting my folio has been on the top of my to-do list for a thousand years. I watch it get booted to the bottom of my list every other week. I blame it on a lack of time but really the thought of getting my work out for a camera lens has filled me with a weird, pathetic dread. On the other side, I'm here to report it wasn't that terrible. In fact, I was able to enter into that exciting, productive zone where creativity finds expression. Emma did more than document the work. She interpreted the genre with a sense of fun. For that and for Emma I am super grateful. 

sweetpolka - doodlings

Dreams and Imagination: Light in the Modern City

                                                   

I designed this catalogue Dreams and Imagination: Light in the Modern City to accompany the exhibition of the same name late last year. This was one of those charmed projects from the outset –  a creative joy from start (a coffee date with its writer and exhibition curator Melissa Miles in North Carlton during the last school holidays) to finish (the arrival of hand delivered freshly printed catalogues wrapped in paper and a bow courtesy of the always diligent team at Adams Print). When I break it down, what then constitutes 'creative joy' in a project such as this with several players: a gallery, an independent curator and a printer? It had a team of good listeners with expertise, a sense of confidence, and a healthy perfectionism. It had an adequate timeframe, not overly long, nor too tight. It had a great subject and visual material. And I had autonomy.

The exhibition – documenting modern photography in Australia – straddles the period from the 1930s to the 1970s. Keeping this in mind Melissa and I wanted the design to reflect the time and to keep the emphasis squarely on the photographs. Given that the photographs are all gelatine silver prints we decided on a monochromatic palette with a single steely blue as an accent. That accent appears only in the image credits and on the inside cover, a late addition thanks to Shane from Adams Print who was not certain that the shade of the cover and inside paper stocks would marry well – a good call).

The font is Quadraat, a digital serif font created by Fred Smeijers in 1992. Although it is contemporary in feel it actually draws on pre modern typefaces Garamond (from the 1500s) and Times (late 1700s). I've always liked using Quadraat for body copy for its qualities, legibility and a touch of eccentricity. The headings, credits and footnotes are in Scala, another font designed in the early 1990s. Both Scala and Quadraat were conceived in the Netherlands, a hotbed of typographic innovation. As I'm thinking about it, it strikes me as slightly wondrous that two font families from the other side of the world designed in the same language and within a year of one another would be so right for a historical project from the Antipodes.

Naturally, I am tormented by two or three things I would have done differently (goddammit!) but overall I was happy with the result. Can I say I like it? In fact I am not the only one. A number of people have liked this catalogue. One enthusiast, blogger Peter Costigan, has even posted on it. How nice is that?

Dreams and Imagination: Light in the Modern City 
Closes 1 March 2015
Catalogue costs $25 from the MGA shop.

Monash Gallery of Art
860 Ferntree Gully Road
Wheelers Hill Victoria 3150
Telephone +61 3 8544 0500
T–F 10am–5pm S&S 12–5pm
www.mga.org.au

2014 in review

Whisper in my mask

Whisper in my mask

TarraWarra Biennial, TarraWarra Museum of Art

16 August – 16 November 2014

TarraWarra Museum of Art has been mounting biennial’s for eight years. The exhibitions are designed to chart new developments in contemporary art. From the outset the museum has engaged external curators to conceive exhibitions that explore an idea, theme or tendency in contemporary art practice. Whisper in My Mask, the fifth in this line is a collaboration between curators Natalie King and Djon Mundine. King, who amongst other shows, curated Up Close: Carol Jerems with Nan Goldin, Larry Clark and William Yang at Heide in 2010 is interested in edgy subcultures and relationships - between artists, milieus, individuals; Mundine’s writing and curatorial practice has focused on Aboriginal art, including the remarkable Aboriginal Memorial (1987-1988), 200 hollow log coffin poles from Ramingining, a project similarly geared towards the collective. 

While King and Mundine have gravitated towards different curatorial subjects, in their joint catalogue essay King and Mundine offer an insight into their shared methodology: “ The relationality  of curating individual artists, community, society, inside and outside the gallery, and creating a conversation between objects and community through a number of devices and on a number of levels, is something we unconsciously just thought was our normal practice.” King and Mundine’s practice foregrounds relationships, collaboration and conversation and this is evident in the assembled artists and works. This methodology underpins the biennial in a myriad of ways, and, in fact, forms the most cogent framework for thinking about the exhibition itself.

The exhibition features 16 individuals and groups, including a number of collectives; boat people, a Sydney based collective of 10 who contributed a video-based work, The Tjanpi Desert Weavers, a dynamic social enterprise that were commissioned by the biennial to make sculptures, as well as artistic collaborations: Destiny Deakin and Virginia Fraser, Veronica Kent and Sean Peoples, and Karla Dikens’ who took photographs in partnership with Lismore Soup Kitchen and Southern Cross University, and sisters Gabriella Mangano and Silvana Mangano. 

Whisper in My Mask explicitly draws on the trope of the mask. The accompanying exhibition catalogue essays elaborate an understanding of the origins, meaning, symbolism and use of masks in Western and indigenous cultures. Masks allude, we know, to human disguise, to camoflage, to erasure, secrets and hidden meanings. How then is this theme articulated across the exhibition? The curators have taken a broad perspective selecting artworks that either formally or by way of subject probe this idea. Walking through the gallery space there was a palpable sense of intensity. Between Polinexi Papepetrou’s photographs of clowns, some wearing costumes made of the Union Jack, boat-people’s video instillation Muffled Protest depicting the collective artists sitting on the steps of the Sydney Opera House with their faces covered by the Australian flag, Tony Garifalakis’ photographic camouflage portraits, and Nasim Nasr’s video installation of a weeping woman wearing a chandor,  I felt the full impact of so many potent symbols in close proximity. Fiona Foley’s sculptural installation of towering serif letters spelling out Black Velvet rendered in wood and metal (referring to the racial slur and not simply fabric) ratcheted it up a notch. Foley’s words loomed like a provocative headline in an exhibition that read like a newspaper; a cacophony of people, stories, recent events demanding action.

An edited version of this review appears in the forthcoming issue of Artlink 34 #4 Sustainable? out in December.

image: Tony Garifilakis, The Hills Have Eyes, 2012

Defaced

At Monash Gallery of Art on the weekend for the opening of the Photography Meets Feminism: Australian Women Photographers 1970s–80s exhibition I found myself on the floor where pencils and paper had been provided for the kids. I doodled with the monkeys who were enjoying the materials and space. Otto found loose sheets of photocopies, reproductions of early photographs and got busy defacing them. Shortly afterwards assembled in the large hall for comedian and art history graduate Hannah Gadsby's opening address things got a bit raucous. Speaking without notes, Gadsby dropped a few expletives. Nothing too outrageous but someone left the room in protest. Gadsby enjoying the unfolding scene called out to Otto "What is the rudest word you know?". Was there something in the cheese? The air? I can't say for certain but it was kinda funny.

Needlework from Norway

With long winters it's no surprise those living within a coo-ee of the Arctic Circle can work a needle and thread. I was amazed by this chair and cushion combo in Norway. Actually almost everything in this living room was fantastic. We were visiting for lunch. Not being handy with a camera I turned to my parter in crime and wiggling my fingers in mime mouthed "Take some photos."

I have a big appetite for interiors magazines and read everything: from the accessible, aspirational end of the publishing spectrum to cold architectural titles and the peerless World of Interiors. I like looking at photos of other peoples homes a great deal. There is something about photography and interiors that click, excuse the pun. The good fit became apparent to me thinking about art and the cluster of magazines devoted to that sector and creative activity. Why is it that I love art but have little interest in art magazines? In the end I want magazines to be an uncomplicated pleasure. Discourse or chairs? No contest.

Gaps

David Rosetzky and I have been working on a feature film for as long as it takes to learn to speak, crawl, walk, sleep, eat and take up the violin. I can say this for certain because the project's inception  coincided roughly with the year of Hazel's conception. Given Hazel is on on her way to school next year, I would have thought it would have progressed further but I've been writing for long enough to know creative writing, as practised by moi, is painstakingly slow work. Occasionally thinking on it is cause for a grade 'A' funk but I've come to view it as a correction. I chew through other kinds of work at a scary clip. I am almost reconciled to the fact that I am unlikely to view my work in a cinema (I should have been born a decade earlier and taking my small, indie films into production back when Steven Soderbergh was fretting about the sexual mores of Andy McDowell and the Kino was the only art house cinema in town). For this reason I took extra pleasure in seeing David's 30 minute video Gaps at ACMI since I played a part in its creation. Officially I am down as co-writer though I am the first to admit that's a stretch given not one of the words uttered by its fabulous cast were familiar to me. Drawn loosely from material developed by us, it is a beautiful, hypnotic exploration of similarity and difference. I found it warm and graceful thanks largely to Stephanie Lake's earthy choreography which shifts speeds and plays with movement in simple, affecting ways and the sound track that is twangy acoustic. That I had a hand in this lovely work is a testament to magical thinking. 

Gaps at ACMI until February 2015 (though the long screening time is no excuse to miss it!)

Assemblages, 2008-9

 

Otto Zagala, aged 3-4.
Materials: various.

Angelica Mesiti's The Calling

Before visiting ACMI last weekend I would have said that DreamWorks Animation: The Exhibition would be hands-down more entertaining than Angelica Mesiti's The Calling. I am pretty sure I don't have to explain the DreamWorks studio (creators of feel-good animations including Shrek, Madagascar, Kung-Fu Panda etc). The Calling is a half hour non-narrative multi screen artwork about whistling. And yet despite DreamWorks' pleasures – and there were many including several  interactive opportunities, delightful dioramas, masterful illustrations and informative documentary shorts that outlined the creative process – Mesiti's beguiling artwork won out.

Me and the monkeys sat glued to our bench seat captivated by the action as it unfolded across three screens. We saw goats on a hill side, old ladies picking tea leaves, a tourist bus stopping at a restaurant, children in a classroom. The settings shifted between Turkey, France and the Canary Islands. Each sequence showed, at some point, whistling conversations between people separated by distances. We were intrigued by so many different things: the ambiguous relationship between footage that created a strong sense of suspense; the different whistling techniques; the rituals and routines of rural life in different parts of world.

I appreciated the calming sense of space that it opened up internally. I only ever feel like that after practicing yoga, a trip to the country or an hour with the psychotherapist.

The Calling
Angeica Mesiti
ACMI
4 February – 13 July 2014
Entry free

Still from Angelica Mesiti: The Calling 2013-14.

Shibori dreaming

When I take a long break from blogging I return uncertain. How to pick up the thread? How do I connect there with here. That period included a birthday – and a week long hangover during which I almost burnt the kitchen down and ate lots of soft cheese and bread – a trip to Canberra to give a lecture to art history students on collaborative screen printing workshops (1972-present day) and a crisis in my day job. See what I mean? I'm not sure I was even the same person back then. I'm beginning to think this is how a habit can break. You pause. To be honest this intense confluence of events has prompted a period of reflection. That reflection has taken place on a number of levels: on the historical forces that shaped late twentieth century visual culture here in Australia (the lecture), my own life (the 40th) and what the future might hold (the job crisis). Which brings me to the tote which caught my eye when I was googling 'shibori' in a late night stupor a few weeks back. I love it. There is something about the earthy, inky quality of indigo that no other dye seems to possess. It's quietening. I like the bags geometric forms, soft lines and shading. Right now it's the right metaphor for where my psyche is at. This bag holds my uncertain thoughts, unspoken fears, and deep longings.

Rebecca Desnos. 100% organic bags hand dyed with natural indigo. 22 pounds