Tamawarra II
Tamawarra II Mixed media.
Getting ready to speak is not like an express train.
The art of writing a piece for spoken word performance of any kind is a long bang on an anvil with a steel hammer. Sometimes the sparks fly fast and furiously and then the slow “ting, ting” is on again. The joy of the smart phone is that an idea can be caught on the note pad or recorded. Makes banging easier. And then rewrites happen inevitably when the inspired idea sounded so good but with critique and reflection it ”falls off the anvil”. But the inspired idea and phrase still need putting down however many times they are burnt. We need others to work with us and give us reflective feedback to “co-construct the meaning.” Having never been a comedian, my observation of my son and other wonderful people I have met in Brisbane and Melbourne at the comedy festivals is that the feedback takes years but it can be the fire that the steel needs for the anvil to make an impression that delivers a work of art that get people saying: “That was bloody funny. How does he [she] do it?!”
God’s graffiti message.
On the way up the hill to the Mental Health Ward at RBWH I found some scrawled graffiti, old style. Stone on stone, scratched on the wall near the steps. Unmissable. “God [loves] everything”. Then last week the “everything” was scratched out. I love graffiti and this outsider artist conversation!
Decompos-ART
Cleanup behind one of the street art walls at Jugglers after 2 years of neglect and the January 2011 floods reveals the beauty of some kind of print process taking place naturally – no human intervention at all.
2011 and the tale of the winding house.
ABC Radio National’s Saturday “By Design” show on Saturdays is one of my picks. I love architecture, space and place. In today’s show we were invited to join ” Alan Saunders and the By Design team for a highly unusual forum celebrating the architecture and urban design of one of our greatest cities. Unusual because the venue for our forum is that quintessential Melbourne mode of transport, a tram: The City Circle tram to be exact.” As radio gives space for our minds to imagine [as opposed to the dulling TV can do] I found myself at the same places they were talking about. Flinders Street Station, Fed Square, The Royal Exhibition Buildings [where I did my final RMIT exams in 1971] the Parliament Buildings. Melbourne is my home town, my heart town, my city of choice, my Paris! Paris did get a mention in the context of the 40 metre high exclusion zone in and around Flinders Street. It is in that zone that Melbourne is alive with alley ways and coffee shops and art studios. Paris and Berlin and other great cities have stood against the high rise and so have enriched their cities. Brisbane [where I live now] still has an undeveloped right brain when it comes to town planning, pulling down such icons as Festival Hall and now the Regent Theatre. Listening to Saunders and his erstwhile team led me to drag a book out of my library by Phillip Goad that I bought in 2004: “A guide to Melbourne Architecture.” Divided into eras of architecture in Melbourne’s development, I found reference to Snellman House near the Yarra River [Ivanhoe] close to where I use to live between 1958 and 1961. [This house was built in 1954] As a young kid growing up in Melbourne at East Ivanhoe State School, I got to know Dirk Snellman. We were in the same class and I used to go to this amazing house that curved down the hill towards the river and we would run down the hallway with rooms branching off and the big gum just outside that seemed to hold it all together. And we would grab bits of carboard and slide down the hill on the grass next to the house. Funny that this is my memory at this moment in time as we slip into one year out of the other. Architecture and buildings hold stories and revisiting them evokes memories. Even the odd ABC program or a book on architecture can trigger a rich memory.
Spreading the word
This Christmas I made a tree out of an old tree branch from the rubbish in our yard. There is a new fence now and to make a connection with the old discarded trees I chose a branch with long spindly branches. I pruned it and trimmed it and made it so it would fit in the house and in a pot of white stones. Then I chose an old bible that was falling apart as the covering, as the pages that would “contextualise” the tree. The bible was ripped and torn and I wrapped and glued page after page of Genesis and Luke and Micah around the branches. I would never rip the bible that I used to use as a one time preacher or the one my father had that is full of underscores and where I found a small page of drawn cartoons he did for me while we sat in church when I was about 9 months old. But somehow I could tear this other one that someone else had put together as their contribution to the “spreading of the word.” And this “contextualised tree” and the torn book became a metaphor for my imagination. When we keep the words that are precious to us or that are truth for us in a stuck state, in a covered library of museum pieces that are used to bludgeon or defend idealogoies then we miss the life that is in and around and always emerging from them.
Like this:
Metro Arts [Brisbane] Simon Degroot and Keith Burt.November 9 Opening.
Simon Degroot continues to accelerate the production of geometrical shapes into larger works with additions of loose marks and a vibrant pallette. The strong shape repetition is mesmerizing and could be visual response to a Philip Glass composition as in his sound track for Powaqqatsi.Simon’s two smaller ” Tie Burst” works were the only pieces Simon ventured that had no geometrical boundaries. I loved his work and the evolution of his style, the life emerging in the random colour sweeps represents his new vision. In the next and smaller – and very hot – space is juxtaposed Keith Burt [winner of the 2011 Jugglers Marie Ellis Drawing Prize] beautifully rendered realistic still lifes and portraits. Keith had been busy and had sold quite a few [whereas Simon hadn't sold any when I was there] maybe indicative of the conservative safe collectors in Brisbane.Keith’s works are very appealing and well priced and in every sense showed the work of an accomplished painter. I could fill my house with works by both artists. Jugglers looks forward to Keith joining the judging panel for the 2012 Marie Ellis Drawing Prize. Which way will Keith go next with his works? Which way Simon?
Legal graffiti and public taste
“Graffiti” is a loaded term, almost a call to war! “Art” is a warm fuzzy word. Graffiti is a sharp terrorism for a large sector of the Australian population. In the latest Big Issue featuring Amy Whinehouse [August 11 - 29] the “Orstralian Kulture” article is a warm fuzzy graffiti story about the chalked ”Eternity” , a word plastered around Sydney by Arthur Stace in the 50′s and 60′s. This word and its text now has Tradmark ownership over it by Sydney City Council. ”Eternity” is iconic. On ABC Radio National Art Nation today [August 21, 2011] I listened to a a fascinating story about Yarn Bombing – knitted graffiti being “put up” by all kinds of people who knit and crochet who then hang their works around the city in public places without formal council permits. On line ABC feature “The Drum” last week featured a thoughtful piece on a teacher getting a smack in the mouth by a group of kids he challenged who were tagging the back of a train in Sydney’s West. He was not taking a neo Nazi zero tolerance approach to this art form but did posit the question about how we respond to this activity as a society. Cultural values around the arts are developed by the people, the market, the artists, the government arts departments and law enforcement agencies over generations. What is it about graffiti that is ok for some but not for others that we need to change or accept? Why do so many people want to be at our place [Jugglers] for events, to paint, for photo shoots? What is it about this last bastion of freedom of speech, as some have suggested, that evokes such a divide?
