creativity, play, friends

As part of a visual self portrait at school Hazel listed "partying" as something she was 'good at'. So you can imagine with her sixth birthday was a big event. In the lead up she wrote list after list covering categories such as guests, food, games, music and themes. A little closer to the date she collated these into a book, the party book. The themes were elaborate, ambitious and resource-wise, demanding. In total seriousness she requested Taylor Swift. This was when the Gym bus party was sitting at top of the list. As in, Could Tay Tay sing on top of the Gym bus? I'm sure Tay Tay could pull it off but as I explained, she had tour commitments. Closer to the date I became more nervous. Any attempt to firm up plans was met with tears. So we put the lists, the book and the talk to one side. And while all the party planning was on hold I got to thinking about parties and how the art of throwing a party was being lost in a culture of outsourcing. Goddammit, I thought, we are going old school. Breaking the news was tough. Hazel cried and cried and cried. Holding her wrapped in a blanket after her epic sob session we gazed at the empty yard and hills hoist against a grey sky. That hills hoist would make a great frame for some streamers, I ventured. Eventually, my little party animal looked up and agreed. Her spirits lifted. She loved the days of preparation, all of us working together on baking, games and decorations (including a purpose-built "Welcome" booth for Otto in the front yard). Sure, I had a crisis on the morning. I was literally puffed from tidying the house at double speed. If I was throwing a pool party I wouldn't be puffed, I'd be holding a latte. 

But Hazel welcomed her friends with pride. They had a great time. My favourite thing? Watching the kids tear around in an hour-long game of hide and seek. They didn't need anything other than each other and a glass of water. Parched hunters and nervous, excited prey. It was a Happy Birthday.

Carol/The Revenant/Spotlight

I've been listening to the BBC's Kermode & Mayo's Film Reviews on podcast for sometime now and it's got me thinking how much I enjoy listening to conversations about films. I think I like listening to them even more than having actual conversations myself.

It was on Kermode & May's program that I heard Cate Blanchett describing working with Todd Haynes on Carol, Leonardo DiCaprio disclosing the 'transforming' experience of working with an 'artist' shooting a 100 minute film with dialogue that covered half an A4 sheet of paper for The Revenant and my new Hollywood Husband Mark Ruffalo - sorry Edward Norton, you've been displaced  - on ensemble acting in Spotlight. They were all wonderful subjects: serious, engaging, generous, totally committed to their craft and getting their films seen. I can report in the world of professional film people at the top of their game seem to try hard and give it their best.

I know that probably sounds cynical, it's not intended that way. Some days I just feel like the distance between our private and public selves is a gap so wide it pulls apart logic and sense. I got to thinking about this recently reflecting on my feature film rewrite which was a herculean effort. Writing every day for a month was gruelling. Doing it with two monkeys on school holidays with Christmas in the middle felt like a folly of the highest order. Moving between work and home was something akin to daily time travel, right down to edgy camera shakes to signify the awkward transition. It was discombobulating in every way and felt harder with each passing day. The needs of small children –  their moods and variable temperaments – and the exhausting detail of domestic life, as well as the demands of a complex and large creative project almost broke me, except it didn't. Even virtual strangers stopped me to tell me "Looking gggreeeaat". Go figure.

It's even stranger to consider that writing is an imaginative interpretation of the space between those different spheres - our public and private selves - and how we feel and behave as we inhabit them. Off air at BBC headquarters maybe Mark Ruffalo kicked himself for describing himself as an 'activist' - and not just a wealthy movie star. Cate Blanchett could have disconnected and thought "Banging on about the theatre, AGAIN". Leo? I couldn't even speculate. What I'm imagining is not really for sharing publicly. It's staying private.

By the way they were all fine films. All three of them.

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

Gayby Baby

We always get to a film during school holidays. The obvious choice would have been Oddball, the new Australian film about the unlikely friendship between a penguin and a labrador, but Otto – already ten years of age – remembered the trailer for Gayby Baby (Maya Newell, 2015) from our Jim Henson fest at the Nova some time back, and had it in his sights. I could see its appeal. The documentary features four kids aged between 9 and eleven as they navigate life – school work, sibling relationships and passions – in family's with same sex parents. It tells the story of Gus, Ebony, Graham and Matt, and their relationship with themselves, their parents and the world outside their font door as they negotiate acceptance and their own sense of belonging.

In each of the stories Newell has found a satisfying narrative: Gus' campaign to persuade his mums to accept his passion for crazy-ass WWF wrestling; Ebony's audition and hopes to be accepted into a socially progressive performing arts high school; Graham's struggles with literacy, the legacy of a heartbreaking early childhood; and Matt's unenviable situation – working out whether he believes in Jesus when his church considers his mother, a lesbian and full-on Christian, a sin against God.

I was expecting an interesting film but I was surprised by its beauty. Newell's sure sense of craft is evident at every level, from casting to cinematography, editing and sound. Gayby Baby also uses setting to create contrast: messy bedrooms, rain soaked sports ovals, the fecund tropical gardens of Fiji. Newell's approach to narrative – focusing on change and moving between the individual and collective, the private to public – borrows from fiction films to superb effect.

The drama is not in the same-sex relationships: the relationships represented, what we see of them, are all loving and functional. It's in the struggles all parents of children face: negotiating difference, relegating resources, providing support and boundary setting. What stays with me – other than the kids irrepressible sense of fun – is the ordinary and yet moving portraits of family life, the love and hopes that parents have for their children and what effort familial love inspires. Gayby Baby finishes on an uplifting note and the joyful celebration of Madi Gras. No shame. The shame is mine, for this country and its cruel, outdated laws.

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

Outline by Rachel Cusk

When people ask me how the school holidays are going I usually say, great. It's restful not doing the school run. The kids have a chance to unwind. We stay in our pyjamas until we feel like going somewhere, build lolly dispenser machines using cardboard boxes, kick the soccer ball around the backyard, head out for spring rolls on Victoria street, you know, knit together as a family. 

But that's only part of the story. At this point of the  holidays I am also a shadow of my former self. By former self, I mean me, two weeks ago. It's as though through the process of tending to my offspring my contours have become blurred. I exist in the service of others. The monkeys have no interest in my inner life, other than to check in with me when they become concerned or suspicious that I am "phoning it in." It's true, every now and again a powerful sense of hostility and aggression erupts inside of me about the demands of motherhood and the difficulty of securing one fricken' hour to myself during the daytime (after a solo trip to the milk bar for a can of beans I am unrecognisable like I've just returned from a month long Vipasnia retreat. Present. Radiant. Energetic. Calm).  On weekends Stevie's loving gaze carries a heartbreaking amount of sympathy. But to his offers of hugs, I can only yell: Don't come near me, I'm hungry.

I think professionals call it "self-managing".

Because I need to be here, I fantasise about being there. There, being anywhere. Only a few things keep me sane on this tour of duty: a night out on the turps with friends, brisk walks in parkland's and reading fiction. I am ridiculously grateful for authors, especially good ones. (Not you Kirsty Clements of Vogue editorship fame, your novel was so lame, so tedious I read it only with the thought it might be useful one day if I write anything that requires a working knowledge of magazines and/or eating disorders). Good novels, on the other hand, are my salvation. Outline by Rachel Cusk was superb. Formally inventive – a series of recounted conversations – it is so insightful, elegant and provocative, that I felt genuine wonder for how it achieves both a sense of melancholy and gentle satire. The story is simple. It follows its middle aged protagonist, a  recently separated professional writer as she travels to Athens to run writing workshops. The book is a moving meditation on the value and role of relationships in culture and the catastrophe of divorce, while revealing almost nothing about its narrator. It's as though she simply exists. This week, that struck a real chord.  

Gods and Kings: The Rise and Fall of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano

In the early 1990s I was in my most magazine reading intensive period. This was before the internet when monthly titles actually brought news. Poorer than a church mouse I still forked out a whack of coin for my favourite, the US Harpers Bazaar. Under the editorship of the British Liz Tilberis it was  truly something special. It occupied a special space in my still largely un-lived and undefined life, one that did not yet include children or a husband. I was transfixed by its imaginative fashion spreads photographed by largely up and coming photographers like Mario Sorrenti and Craig Dean featuring super (and less well known models) Naomi Campbell, Helena Christiansen, Linda Evangalista, Karmen Kass, Nadia Auermann, Claudia Schiffer, Amber Valletta, Shalom Harlow, Kate Moss and Stella Tennant. As a cultural moment I remember that five year period as being both highly romantic and grunge. The designers and fashion houses represented between its pages - editorial and advertising - were largely European: John Galliano for Givenchy and Dior, Alexander McQueen for Givenchy, Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel. In addition to them Tom Ford at Gucci and Gianni Versace were pushing a sleazy disco glamour.

Coming of age during that period, it's been interesting reading Dana Thomas' Gods and Kings: The Rise and Fall of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano, a book that documents the nineties and noughties in global fashion through the prism of two of its uber designers and their rise and subsequent fall (McQueen by suicide, Galliano through disgrace). Not familiar with Thomas' previous work I was persuaded by the fact that she'd written for the New Yorker, the benchmark for quality journalism these days (though truth be told it's closer to Who Weekly than that venerable magazine). Thomas details Galliano and McQueen's working class upbringings and then settles in for a detailed description of their careers, show by show. She contextualises their ascendancy alongside the growth of the luxury market. I'm guessing that was the subject of her previous book, Deluxe. I enjoyed the behind the scenes machinations of major fashion houses and developed a good appreciation of what made McQueen such as remarkable designer: precise tailoring, a sense of the macabre and an interest in working closely with collaborators – jewellers, milliners – on unique, strange accessories. Her heart belongs to him.

Of all weeks I was glad to have it beside me this week, one in which I spent three nights on a fold out armchair at the hospital beside my beautiful boy. When we were sad and overwhelmed by his diagnosis of chronic illness, or trying to stave off frightening thoughts of the future and what it would require of us – thoughts that would rouse us in the dead of night – we'd turn on the night lights and read together until the dread passed.

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.

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

The Godfather I, II, III

Over the past few years during the Christmas season, specifically the days between Christmas Eve and Boxing Day I've noticed how receptive I am to film. I can't really account for it other than I know in this demanding and volatile emotional period I find myself on the couch with the remote in my hand looking to decompress from the interpersonal intensity of the festive marathon. I'm usually congratulating some nameless individual (the programmer) for their excellent choices. This year, for instance, I fell into a grateful trance watching The Godfather I, II and III over three nights muttering "Genius!" to myself. Is there another series of films more perfect at expressing the wiggy dimensions of family life – its pleasures, obligations and horrors – than this classic trio from America? When I studied Cinema at university in the mid 1990s Francis Ford Coppola was considered a giant who had lost his touch. No one could take the 1970s away from him but, prevailing opinion held that his later films were not as successful. While Martin Scorcese was moving onto Raging Bull and Age of Innocence Coppola was making strange episodes for television and ordinary children's films (The Black Stallion, anyone?). When The Godfather  III was released in 1990 – the only one I saw in the theatres – I remember being disappointed by its flatness. Revisiting it, I was more forgiving. Here is a film preoccupied with regret, legacy and wealth (most likely mirroring Coppola's own life-stage dilemmas) and not the aggressive, energetic turf wars of two decades earlier. I found it closer in theme and texture to Wall Street and Pretty Woman in its reckoning with material excess. Sure, The Godfather III doesn't come close to the inventive and elegiac tone of its predecessors. The straight, steely first instalment with its superb cinematography framing actors on a horizontal or vertical plane and Coppola's use of props; a lighter, a bag of oranges, to intimate psychology or as metaphor – and its ambitious, heartbreaking sequel from 1974. I was in awe of Coppola's nerve watching The Godfather II  especially the set pieces with a cast of thousands, the film's slightly hysterical atmosphere and marvellous casting. Three short years later Coppola would make Apocalypse Now. Like I said, a giant.

2014 in review

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!)

Warsaw pot plants

Possibly because of the nature of housing in Warsaw, medium density, the city's inhabitants have a particular kind of relationship with nature. This is a city where public parks and pot plants reign supreme. Warsaw's parks are beautiful – lush, varied and highly cultivated. And even the smallish squares the central point around each housing complex in my inner suburb of Mokotow, where we were based, are well maintained. You can't step a metre without bumping into a rubbish bin though good luck finding a seat (a deliberate strategy to limit loafers apparently). I was touched most though by the pot plants. I have vivid memories of my grandparents flat circa 1994 where an entire wall of the living room was covered by plants like a jungle scene. Each floor of the stairwell of their six floor apartment building had a number of pot plants lined up beside a window, in a curated display that suggested the pastime was taken seriously. The plants are still there, still tended to and watered. It's nothing like a Mediterranean film, no gingham in sight, or artful watering cans. Just a few 1.5 litre plastic bottles, a motley crew of recycled pots and saucers, some succulents and a few hardy blooms. I was moved by the  communal effort on which their survival depended and how little was made of it other than a basic and unspoken agreement that the presence of plants mattered.

Photos: Josef Lumley

Assemblages, 2008-9

 

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

Kindergarten, Rena, Norway

Bath Evader

Okay, for those of you with little peeps, are probably familiar with Moshi Monsters, a website developed for tweens. It looks and feels very pan Asia – a little Kawaii, a little Bollywood with Willy Wonka thrown in for good measure. It is, in fact, the brainchild of UK website developer Michael Acton Smith. I have read more than one Moshi Monsters magazine out loud at bedtime though it's difficult to describe the pun-riddled copy as 'writing' and yes, I did see the movie when it came out. Thankfully, not being a Pixar/Dreamworks animation there was no take home message about personal growth and leadership, just small critters – clouds with legs, doe-eyed unicorns, little devils – tearing it up on screen. The characters are crazy cute. Naturally, Otto has been scratching his (head lice free) head trying to come up with his very own. I'm always interested in observing someone else's creative process. Otto is no fan of the bath but loves Star Wars. Put that in a blender and you get Bath Evader, Darth Vader's smelly cousin. That light saber is swatting at flies.