Alison Hanly

Not a canary

2012-01-12T19:11:00.000-08:00

Here are some paintings I have been working on. I am planning to hang them in a groovy bakery / cafe in Castlemaine in February!

Gil Scott Heron, Chuck Norris and art

2011-05-27T23:15:00.000-07:00

In case you didn't know Gil Scott Herron (musician, sometimes called the father of rap) died yesterday so there are lots of tribute type comments and sentiments out there in the land of the internet.

I saw a link to Gil Scott Herron, (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOBVa6Gg6PA&feature=share) and thought I'd remind myself about him. (I will add a disclaimer before you read further that I don't know that much about Gil Scott Heron, his life or his influence. However I still had some ideas I thought worth sharing...)

As i watched and listened I read the comment directly under the clip. It was:

"Chuck Norris saw Gil Scott Heron, bowed to Gil, shook his hand and said "Thanks for the wonderful music you have given us." After that he got Gil's autograph, got a high five and watched with tears in his eyes as Gil walked into the sunset."

I kind of sighed and rolled my eyes it is overly sentimental and it does that awful thing of building a myth out of a man. I hate that. He was a guy, a really great guy perhaps, maybe a unique, profoundly talented man, but he was human. I object to deifying and mystifying a human. It creates a divide between him and me and the rest of humanity and that does none of us justice. Especially him.

The author of the comment achieved this link to myth quite neatly by linking him to Chuck Norris. In popular culture Chuck Norris is a joke and a Myth. He is the ultimate all American, good guy, martial artist. You use him when you want to demonstrate just how bad ass something is.

some example Chuck Norris Jokes:

Chuck Norris died 20 years ago, Death just hasn't built up the courage to tell him yet.
There used to be a street names after Chuck Norris, but it was changed because nobody crosses Chuck Norris and lives.
Chuck Norris can cut through a hot knife with butter
Chuck Norris and Superman once fought each other on a bet. The looser had to start wearing his underwear on the outside of his pants.
Some magicians can walk on water, Chuck Norris can swim through land.

(For more fun Chuck Norris facts, jokes and merchandise check out: http://www.chucknorrisfacts.com/chuck-norris-top-50-facts)

So you can see that Chuck Norris is now a myth-man who is better than Superman, Jesus and even Death itself is afraid of him ('Death once had a near Chuck Norris experience'). He has become immortal end ever young, ever powerful and undefeatable. In other jokes god, nature and the laws of physics all bend for him.

I have to admit I really quite like a lot of the better Chuck Norris Jokes. Some of them predictably get quite foul, but as a whole it is a fun game of word play, machismo and ridiculousness.

Anyway, to have Chuck Norris pay respect to Gil Scott Heron is to say that he has earned and deserves the respect of even the baddest mother fuckers, and once you're mates with Chuck, no one will mess with you.

As I pondered the various elements at work within that comment I realised something about the value of art.

I was watching the tall man playing music and surrounded by other men playing music and in the macho context of the Chuck Norris comment it was really clear to me the value of the fact that these men had chosen to focus their lives on music, and art. They had not taken up arms and decided to hurt people. The idea that music as an outlet, art as an outlet... and how you could have every person on the planet making music or art and it would never be too much. You could not have every person on the planet do any other activity and it be ok.

And I guess, on a basic level I was responding the power of the Chuck Norris myth, I was absorbing the idea that it is ok to make art. Chuck Norris approves. Its allowed. I don't have to put on a cape and save the world, I don't have to mount podiums and start preaching and converting, I don't have to contribute anything more than my art. And at the end of my life I may have a) contributed something worthwhile and b) avoided spending my time creating harm (one would hope... a whole other discussion might be about how art can be hurtful and damaging - but lets not go there here and now). And they are both worthy things to have spent a life doing.

Yes, I was being influenced by a tongue in cheek, slightly facetious YouTube comment.

Don't get me wrong. Gil was not a passive, feel good guy with no issues. He was an activist, linked with militant black movements and his music was often angry or loaded with political import. He had drug problems and was in and out of jail.

I am not saying art is the answer to all of societies problems.

But I do need, as an artist myself, reminders about how powerful and positive dedicating your life to art can be. It is so important to be reminded that it is a powerful medium, especially as so much of your time and effort is spent in relatively solitary activity. (perhaps less so for musicians) You can influence people, you can say stuff to a wide audience, you can share a point of view that may not get heard in other arenas, you can inspire, give confidence, improve people's lives without even meeting them.

Some artists make things that just add to the noise in the world, some create peace, some educate, some provide a sense of community to isolated people. And yes, i do think that some do harm. However, it seemed clear to me in that moment, somewhere between Chuck Norris and Gil Scott Heron, that it is worthy. It is not a waste, I am not squandering my potential, i am not neglecting other duties I may have to society or my fellow humans. (You see the devils that can haunt an artist?!?! Self worth and the worth of your practice. What to spend a life doing...) So my pondering lead me to a sense that it is possible to be an artist in whatever form and you would not be selfish or self indulgent in pursuing your practice, you have no idea who you might touch and what benefit that might have.

Gil Scott Heron did all this in his creative life, he used words, poetry, lyrics, music to work against injustice. Whatever failings or struggles he may have had he at least did this, with intelligence, authenticity and poetry.

like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaD-FKIfYgk&feature=related

What's been going on?

2011-04-20T20:14:00.001-07:00

It has been quite some time since I posted here. What. Has. Been. Happening?!?!?!

Well... I have been lost in a land of in-between-jobs-studying-homework-ness.

I have spent the last year reminding myself of all the things I've learnt before. But not for no reason. Its funny, I was reading back over my rant from June last year and I have done a lot of the stuff I said I hated doing. I've gone back to school, and not even fun school... really un-fun school. I have done a Cert IV in Training and Assessment. Here in Australia you need one to teach adults in TAFEs. It has swallowed about a year of my life, whole, no pausing for air. I am almost finished, just a few little loose homework ends and I will have a piece of paper that says I can teach. Woohoo, I think. Not sure I want to teach in TAFE now... I've started my own independent classes and you don't need bits of paper for that.

alliesartclasses.blogspot.com

I will admit that I was seriously considering deleting this blog, as I haven't added to it in such a long time. But I spent a little time looking back and I realised that I still like it. It helped me reconnect with a lot of the work and shows I have had in the past few years and which ultimately I have had mixed feelings about. I haven't painted, I will admit it, in about a year. And re-reading the blogs was a great way to reconnect with the work I was doing and now as I finally start to edge carefully back into that creative head-space it is a beautiful thing to come back to the old work and see it fresh.

As painful as the course I've been doing has been it has provided a time gap to help me see things fresh again. A good thing. And I have a new piece of paper.

The Sydney Biennale

2010-07-26T18:39:00.000-07:00

Sydney town eh? Mostly I have disliked my trips to Sydney. Something horrible seems to happen every time I go. Nothing outrageously bad, just something slimy and gross and kind of upsetting, but leaving no visible marks. Its hard to explain. And while these things are happening Sydney kind of looms above and around, like a dark, creepy phantom endorsing these bad experiences. Is it that I am absorbing the resonances of a place soaked with misery past? Is it just that I am trained into the predicable safe straight lines of Melbourne and find the convoluted ways and byways mysterious? I don’t know.

So I headed to Sydney trying really hard to keep my mind open. I was determined to force it open with a crow bar and then keep it propped ajar with aforementioned crow bar if need be.

Turns out the need didn’t be.

I found myself in a summer paradise, after weeks of cold and grey in Melbourne, Sydney was blissfully frolicking around in a green, lush, perpetual spring of twenty degrees. I had never realised before why my father, who is from Sydney, was always pining for it during the Melbourne winters. Now I know. T-shirts, trees that didn’t realise they needed to drop their leaves yet, bare feet on Bondi Beach, and sun, sun, sun. The twisty, kooky streets and buildings seemed funny and adorably quaint. Strange nooks and hilariously incongruous attachments, the jumbled mix of old and new all seemed like something from an animation by someone trying really hard to make a place that couldn’t really exist in real life.

And the art?!? The thing that i risked my life and sanity by traveling Tiger airways to see?

It was ok. You know, same old same old. Wearing the obligatory contemporary art uniform. Instantly recognisable... ‘I am art!’ it says, before qualifying it with, ‘I am contemporary Art’. Ok, thanks. I heard you.

The Biennale is an awesome thing. Some of the best and most contemporary art in the world travels all the way to Sydney Town. How can that not be Rock and Roll. But somehow is wasn’t. Maybe I was just tired. I seemed to do an awful lot of walking, up and down hills, stairs, more stairs and then a hill. Maybe I needed to concentrate on using the crow bar for the part of my mind that processes art, not the bit that judges cities. Maybe I was so blissed out on sunshine that I forgot to be wowed by art. I admit that for a sun deprived, solar powered chick the art would have to be extra-ordinary. There were some really good peieces that made me smile an sigh, and say 'Hell Yeah!', but there was only one that made me swoon and want to spend an entire day immursed in its glory.

The MCA had some winners; Pearlescent pins made into bonnets, lavishly indulgent ceramics of rudie nudie bits that were so over the top braroque-esque that you had to laugh, peasants discussing old masters, dead and dying languages. I liked all of these. They were good. They all made me want to laugh, or touch them or I was jealous that I didn’t think of it. I like art that makes me jealous. It is one of the ways I know it is good. I also like ones that make me think... shoot me off into a little frenzy of connecting dots and drawing parallels. Cockatoo Island of course had some great ones; the flying sparking cars, the bigger than human sized purple deer with a sharks jaw gaping ravenously out of its stomache... We went there on our last day in Sydney, and after four or five days of sun it had clouded over and gotten cold. Remember it is the middle of winter? oh, yeah! And remember yu are about to go home? yup, thanks.

So after starting to accept that not much there was really going to blow me away... It happened. Maybe i just need cold miserable weather to truely appreciate art, but i think i would have loved it anyway. It was.... duh da da duuuuh: ‘The Feast of Trimachio, Part 2’ by AES+F... Sigh.... Gush. Love.

I think it was the music as much as anything. Mozart and Beethoven stand up and take a bow. But it was the music and the visuals... Did I already say sigh, gush, love? It certainly was a feast. Beautiful people, beautiful computer animated scenery, and the birds. They had obviously filmed the people on a blue screen and then superimposed them on the landscape and on each other. And the same people did the same things over and over, but to someone else, in a different setting. It was poetic, profound, indulgent, and generous. It made me think and it made me want to sing and dance, a friend of mine did dance! It was a resort, a paradise for the exhorbitantly wealthy, these people arrived with their white day suits and white luggage and then spread out over the island. It had a feeling of a strange kind of eden, inhabited by gods. Not the one big stern fella, but the old Nordic or Greek gods who loved and had sex and fought and lived. But are not human. More perfect and more faulty. Eternal. It was intense and distilled and erotic, it was menacing and pointed and political, but above all it was lushious. The people moved in ritual formations, repeating and repeating again, seeming to touch each other but really not at all, slight blurrings at the edges told us they did not really touch. Once a servant, next time master, one time leaning in, another time reclining away. Repeating seemingly endlessly, race, class, gender, age all used and subverted. Moments of army like unity as they run in their glitchy ways on treadmills. Other moments of splendid individuality, or duos and trios of predestined interaction. Progressively getting darker and more creepy. Until we watch the end of their world. Aliens, out of control weather, people fleeing accross now hostile landscapes. One little boy who at the start had slowly lowered himself down onto a day bed, this time lowers himself down with an arrow in his chest, red seeping accross his white shirt. And all the time this music is lifting you up and filling you up.

I watched and felt swept away, rejuvinated, touched. Yes, I like to be touched. I walked out and did not want to see any more art. Good thing I saw that one on the last day!

Conlusion: I highly recommend travelling to Sydney for a weekend in the middle of winter. The Biennale is a great excuse to do it. Go to the beach, check out the art and enjoy yourself. And maybe on the last day when the sky is overcaste and you are starting to remember that it is winter after all, you will get swept away and find that one piece that makes you not want to look at any more art for a while.

Photos by Erin Voth

The Impact Of Stones - Part III

2009-07-11T06:54:00.000-07:00

After the third group, from Library Space, had had their wicked way with gallery and its contents we had an opening night to show it off in its final manifestation...

The Impact Of Stones - Part II

2009-07-06T04:11:00.001-07:00

...

This is what the space looked like in week two, after the team from Trocadero had had a go...

The Impact Of Stones

2009-06-28T06:12:00.000-07:00

A group show at Brunswick Arts

Four of us who are involved with the gallery have made work to the theme 'The impact of stones.'
Next week artists from the ARI Trocadero will come into the space and, with the same theme in mind, create work that interacts with or obliterates or alters ours. The week after that a group of artists from the ARI Library Space will come in and do the same again.

This is what we have left:

Alister Karl, curator of the show, threw rocks at the wall and documented it on video... the paper was his target and he threw rocks until it fell off the wall. He has re-pinned it to show.

Colleen Jones made massive rosary beads:

Benjamin Webb made reference to the Rolling Stones:

I made this, called 'Please Do Not Touch.'

Brainstorming about stones

2009-06-23T05:28:00.000-07:00

"The Impact of Stones"

That's the theme of a show.

These are the thoughts: A rolling stone gathers no moss. David and Goliath. Avalanches. The stone age. She/he who lives in a glass house shouldn't throw stones. a stone's throw away. come on everybody lets get stoned. The Rolling Stones. flint - i.e. stones to make fire. Stones to make weapons - spear heads. Stones to build houses, fences, mark property, boundaries. The stoning of people - esp women - as punishment. jewelery - precious stones... stones used to own people, i.e. engagement rings. The earth is a big rock. stone cold. boys throwing stones. blue stone streets. the great wall of china. heart of stone. that myth about that guy (Sisyphus) who had to push the big rock up the hill only to watch it roll down and then do it again for all eternity, i.e. futile effort. Stone the crows. stone as compressed earth. Stone as mineral. stepping stone. corner stone....

moss on stones, soft on hard, alive on dead. a sign of the stone being still, staying in one place for a length of time. but should that rock move, or be moved, the moss will easily tear and give way.

avalanches, many small stones gain momentum and collectively gain a terrifying force, can change the shape and face of a mountain.

stones to build walls, shelter, protection, boundaries to fields and towns and kingdoms. keep others out. or in. so, used to mark and also to contain - property, ownership - and then to protect what is owned.

...

I think I'll build a wall.

Stuff and stuff

2009-06-10T21:36:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I feel like I am in a constant state of existential angst. The forces tugging at my mind may change, but the state of confusion and indecision does not.

Through the years it has always revolved around the question of "what the hell am I doing here and can I justify my existence?!?!" Be that questions of employment, charity, ethics, relationships... they always come back to this and I have never had a solid answer.

Years ago I had that thing that all artists struggle with at one point or another, i.e. can I really justify giving myself over to this thing that is art when I could be feeding the poor or saving the whales or something virtuous. Painting seems so self indulgent. But after trying other things and being miserable, I figured in the end that at the very least if I became an artist then I wouldn't be a liability to society by being so miserable.

And yes, that choice has definitely made me happy - and I have not regretted it. I just wish I had made it earlier. However... contrary to many people's romanticised ideas, it IS actually a hard life. Unless you have a trade that pays well you or you manage to hit the jackpot and produce work that people will pay a lot of money for (which has its own traps in terms of feeling free to branch out and experiment with your content or style), you generally end up working multiple crappy jobs and don't spend nearly enough time in the studio. There is a truth to the poor artist stereotype, and the hardest part is that when you try and make some money from your talents your peers criticise you for being a sell out. (That is a whole other rant let me tell you)

I have spent years trying to run a small business, thinking at at least I could be my own boss. Only to discover I am really, REALLY bad at it and that it took even more of my time than working brainless jobs in someone else's business. I have spent years trying to sell stuff at markets and find myself producing work I wouldn't even buy, and getting depressed about people who literally ask me 'Do you really think you are worth that price?' And I know that that same painting at that price in a gallery would be under priced.

So I have been conflicted between my quiet little desires to produce work that I like and really loud voices, both internal and external that demand I do something useful. Be that to make money, help the world a little, contribute something to the art world and its dialogue, make work that other people think is good... something... anything! oh yeah, and that thing about money is that you really do need it, you know, for things like eating, having enough to pay rent...

Sometimes I just wish that I had some sugar-daddy, or patron who would pay for me to live so that all I had to do was paint. Ha! Like that would ever happen in Australia! And like that wouldn't be a miserable situation of unspoken weirdness, gender issues and kind of horrible gratitude. What I really need is a nice wealthy, jewel encrusted sugar-mumma! who loves me and I love her and there would be no weird incestuous sexual undertones (she'd have to be straight then). She would want to spray me with money and art supplies because she loves elephants and loves my paintings. We could go on safari together in Africa and it would be soooooo cool!

You see, the point is, if I ever get around to it, that I am still conflicted about what to do with myself. Sans my sugar mumma I have to think about things like money and how to make it. I am sure I don't want to be a sales assistant forever, but do i really want to study something else in order to be able to have some other solid skill so that I could get paid more per hour so that I could work less hours so that I would have more hours to paint? Or does that just feel like one more distraction in a long line of distractions that all originally felt like they might have been a way out of that work/paint equation, but that only ever ended up taking so much more out of me than giving back.

I could go back to uni and do a second degree in visual art. Which would at the very least give me a few years of time dedicated to my art practice... but, and maybe I'm just being annoying now, but I hate school. God forbid I should have to do another three years of undergrad... I hate small 3000 word essays~! And I don't take well to making work in any sort of communal environment. I am fiercely private when it comes to the making part. If I was to do it I think I would prefer to skip to a masters if anything, because I really want to sink my teeth into one big project, and make a whole heap of paintings.

Opening night of Show and Tell

2009-05-05T01:25:00.001-07:00

Belinda Wiltshire, who manages the Pea Green Boat studios, has created a gallery space at the front of the complex for one night shows. Artists who have studios there can book it and have an opening night. There are a lot of good things about this scenario, firstly it means that as it is not a proper gallery it doesn't have to be open to the public the rest of the time and none of us have to spend days sitting it. We can leave the work up til the next show goes up - usually a month between them - and bring people through if anyone couldn't make the opening. It is free and less formal than other galleries, which takes some pressure off so we can have more casual shows, and maybe show stuff that is a bit more experimental.

So a perfect setting for a show of sketches and photos taken while away at the Elephant Nature Park. I also managed, thanks to the superior technological skills of my brother, to have a series of videos I took projected up on the wall.

Tusk and Trunk Twisters. Am awesome drink invented by Michelle, one of the staff a the Elephant Park.

As the show was called 'Show and Tell' people started insisting that I say something, not just have all this stuff up on show...

Show and Tell at Pea Green Boat

2009-04-20T06:18:00.000-07:00

I am having a little one night show to share what I
was doing while in Thailand.
The exhibition is going to be held at my studio complex:

The Pea Green Boat.
31 Tinning St,
Brunswick, Vic

from 7-9pm
3rd May, 2009

come along and check out some of the sketches I did and photos I took...

So much to say...

2009-04-20T02:38:00.000-07:00

So I've been back from my Thailand trip for a couple of weeks now but still can't seem to get my head together to know what to write about.

So here is a rundown of all the topics I want to cover and if you click on them you will be linked to a post about them, if I haven't written it yet I promise I will get to it soon.

Art in Bangkok and Thailand

Chiang Mai and the Elephant Park

Sketches

Stories and what I learned about elephants

Bangkok...

2009-02-26T01:06:00.000-08:00

So, well... yes.

Bangkok and I will meet again, after about twelve years apart. Last time I was a teenager, well cushioned from the city by the large group I traveled with. The accommodation, the transport, the activities were all planned by someone else. All I had to do was follow the crowd. It was a wonderful trip actually, I went with a group of WWII veterans, many of whom had been prisoners of war under the Japanese. We visited Hellfire Pass, wandered massive cemeteries of white military crosses, heard first hand stories from the men who had walked there in utterly different circumstances fifty years before. I was quite a random addition to the group. I didn't know anyone else on the trip and at the time I didn't know of any relatives of mine who had been a POW or even fought in the Asian Pacific campaigns. Later I realised I actually had several relatives who had fought there - not the least of which was my grandfather! When I got home my grandmother told me stories I had never heard before about men I had barely heard of, but who were her brothers, cousins, friends. Husband. I guess she had never before thought I'd be interested.

So anyway, Bangkok and I will meet again in exactly one week. This time I am on my own. I am glad to be going back as an adult, where I can choose to stay in less western hotels, eat less western food, and travel in less controlled (and possibly less comfortable) modes of transport.

I am planning to spent two weeks working with the elephants, and the rest of the time will be researching residencies, art universities, galleries, other elephant refuges... and hopefully a little time for a beach or two, a market or two and some mountainous vistas. I may not have access to the internet while with the elephants, but will try and keep the blog updated as much as possible.

wish me luck!

Melbourne's Sustainable Living Festival

2009-02-05T17:20:00.000-08:00

The Sustainable Living Festival is on again coming up on Feb 20-22nd and Federation Square in the city.

This is the link to the festival program:
http://www.slf.org.au/festival/program

there are all sorts of cool sounding talks, seminars and events!

There is a design festival on the Friday at which I will be having a market stall. I'll be selling 100% recycled cards and notebooks, printed with my designs. The market runs from 10am to 6pm!

I am also involved in helping with an event called the Fashion Jam, check out the link:
http://www.slf.org.au/festival/program/interactives/2193

Taking Down TIBA (or how to get a wall drawing off the wall)

2009-02-04T23:38:00.000-08:00

As I have given you the journey of how the painting got made I thought I should also show how it got unmade.

So here it is all lovely on the wall.

That is Alice, she is a photographer and her official capacity in Brunswick Arts has been to document the shows. It was quite funny because I had just bought myself a really nice camera and as we took the show down we were both taking lots of shots of the process of de-installation and of each other taking photos of the de-installation.

I quite like it just like this.

But paint over it we must, so first a coat of grey paint to make it easier to cover in white.

and hey presto it is a pristine white wall again, ready for the next exhibition.

Here are some shots of the other works coming down:

it was REALLY hot! One of those 44 degree days. ugh.

Rosalie Gasgoine

2009-02-04T22:44:00.000-08:00

I went to see the Rosalie Gascoigne show at the NGV today. It was pretty good!

She started making art when she was 57. She had never studied art and yet has ended up one of Australia's most important artists, the first woman to represent us at the Venice Biennale in 1982.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalie_Gascoigne
(Click on this link if you want to read more about her)

She is most famous for work made out of old road signs cut and assembled into abstract patterns.

News Break, 1994

What surprised and thrilled me about her work was all the stuff I hadn't seen much of before.
She made really great sculptural work (as opposed to the above which is all flat and mounted on the wall) She still used all found objects, old enamel jugs and plates, dolls, wooden boxes and grasses, twigs, corrugated iron, metal bits and bobs. It all had a wonderful weathered quality and the items were often quite quaint and old fashioned.

What struck me was how non-sentimental it was. A lot of artists use old weathered objects in their work, but there is a danger in working with them. I think people are attracted to them for their old beat up aesthetic and the sense of lost history and untold stories that accompany them and then the artwork ends up relying on the nostalgia the items evoke and trading on that more than it should. Gascoigne's work really didn't do that. The objects were interesting but the art work was not about the objects themselves, it was about the composition. They were all formal and beautiful compositions. I really, really enjoyed that. She also, as far as I could tell, had not altered the items except to cut them up to size. She had not painted or sanded, messed up or cleaned up any of them. She just cut them up and put them together. There was an astonishing authenticity in that. It was a very refreshing exhibition. I suppose perhaps that is where her japanese flower arranging background comes in, she had a profound purity and simplicity to her aesthetic.

Piece to Walk Around, 1981

Step Through, 1980

(This was made with bits of old lenolium stuck to ply wood)

When asked “…how did you come to be an artist?”, at a major
retrospective of her work at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Rosalie Replied: “Desperation, filling the void. Everything being
not enough, having an astronomer husband who went away
and looked at the stars all the time. That sort of thing.”

2009-01-24T17:11:00.000-08:00

I wrote this in May last year, I was trying to find words to help me explain what the elephant thing is for me, so I could write about it in the catalog for Now She Remembers.

This one is one of my favourites. It says something of the level of personal significance elephants have started to have for me.

Last night I was tired, exhausted in fact.
I lay in bed crying, trying to find a way to feel right.
Mind full of worries, heart full of sorrows,
wading into that bitter cold lake called defeat.
Feeling the tugging currents of too hard, too complicated, at my feet.

Like a sleepwalker I woke slowly
Awake enough to see where I had wandered
I’d been there before. I knew the dangers.
Carefully I reached for things
To help me reclaim the shore

This time
I called my heavy sisters
My tusk and trunk best friends
I asked to borrow some strength please
Some of that massive, swaying power please
Just til I find my own

I started to feel it flow through me
Like a warm, dry, dusty desert breeze
It was good,
it was good and wholesome
But blood intervened

I saw then, in full colour
Bullet wounds and machete sliced skin
I saw flailing trunks and limbs
I heard the terrified trumpeting
And the thuds as they fell to earth
I felt the confusion, the grief, the horror.
Trapped, out witted, out manoeuvred
My sisters, my friends

No match for the human mind
No match for the human greed

With their knowledge and their greed
These tiny human creatures
Can and do and are…

…they are stronger than you

I crouched on the shores of defeat
I curled up in my bed
I cried and cried and cried and cried

Because the species that slaughters you
Is the same one that terrifies me.

An interesting links on elephant training

2009-01-24T17:10:00.010-08:00

This is from the Australian TV show Catalyst on less violent ways of training elephants
http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/2533487.htm

Sketches from the Elephant Park in Thailand

2009-01-24T17:10:00.009-08:00

Here are some samples of the sketching and watercolour paintings
I did while in the elephant park:

Art in Bangkok

2009-01-24T17:10:00.007-08:00

coming soon!

Impressions of Bangkok and Thailand

2009-01-24T17:10:00.005-08:00

coming soon!

Chiang Mai and the Elephant Park

2009-01-24T17:10:00.003-08:00

Here are some photos of the elephants and the park:

What I learned about elephants

2009-01-24T17:10:00.001-08:00

There is soooo much, where to start... I keep having conversations with people and telling them all this cool stuff I learned about elephants while I was away - but when it come to writing it I find it difficult to start.

Well, some quick thoughts:

- Elephants only sleep about 4 hours a day
- They digest very little of their food. Much of it come out intact, I saw whole bananas in the poo. The dogs seemed to find this a particular treat. (Note: never let a dog that has access to elephants lick your face.)
- They really really love mud
- They are much more playful than I had thought, especially the younger ones. But even the older ones are brimming with personality and certain levels of mischief.
- They are born very hairy, but most people are used to seeing bald elephants, this is largely due to the fact that they have been poked so often with sharp things by humans that they now have scar tissue instead of regular skin.
- Elephant hair is very wiry and spiky
- Most people initially saw 'aw - how cute' when they see elephants in a voice that people usually reserve for kittens and babies. Once you have spent any length of time with them you find it the most absurdly inappropriate sentiment.
- They are really cute and funny! but in the way you would say it about a thinking, feeling creature that is unpredictable, clumsy, foolish and massively powerful.
- They are amazingly dexterous with their trunks.
- A one year old baby elephant that is only as tall as my waist is at least ten times stronger than me.
- They have two massive teeth, like molars at the back of their mouths.
- They really love the company of their elephant friends and family and have full and complex social relationships, including favorites and rivals.
- In Thailand it is illegal to capture or harm wild elephants, they are protected. But if the elephant is already in captivity is falls under the same laws of property as livestock and has no legal protection at all. I mean none at all.

I heard stories about elephants being forced to breed. This is done by chaining a female up next to a male in heat (musth) he then effectively rapes her and she gets pregnant. I was told that when the baby is born they have started to take it away from its mother quickly because those females forced to breed are highly likely to kill their offspring.

Musth is a state that the males go into every year or so. It is a crazy thing. It is like the bull elephant gets drunk on testosterone and whatever else. Normally male elephants are reasonably predictable, they slot into the social heirachy and they are more than capable of mating in their normal state, but the dominant bull tends to get most of the action. But every year or so they go into musth. It disrupts the normal social hirachy and allows the less dominant males have their time in the reproductive sun, even the normally dominant bulls back away from a lesser bull in musth. He will be extremely aggressive, sexually charged and will not recognise anyone around him, even his handlers who may have working with him since he was born. Generally in the wild young males will no enter this state because older males seem to somehow delay its onset. but if there are no lolder males around they have been known to go into it much earlier than usual. Thisis one of the issues with the destruction of the natural social groups, especially in Africa where most are wild and the older males are killed for ivory.

Generally in the wild females are choose their mates and are very capable of refusing a male if she doesn't want his attentions.

I have heard stories of pregnant females giving birth on the job, either logging or trekking and the baby rolling down the hill, still in it's sack and dying.

Baby elephanats are hugely expensive, yet the traditional breaking in method involves a lot of trauma and has a high mortality rate.

I heard that it is common practice to keep the males malnourished so that they don't go into musth. Only bulls in a good state of health will go into it. If they enter musth they are unpredictable and unable to be used for work for up to a year.

The making of TIBA work 'Elephants are big. Bigger than me.'

2009-01-22T23:50:00.001-08:00

This is a little pictoral story of how this work (Elephants are big. Bigger than me) got made.

I have been tossing around the idea of trying to represent the actual scale of a real elephant. So far my work has been very literal and kind of illustrative. I have painted elephants that look like elephants, and though they carry the symbolism and hopefully carry a little bit of the dreamlike/subconscious mood I was aiming for, they were very contained on canvass. What I am actually interested in is how memory and specifically repressed memory can be overwhelmingly big, like an elephant. So recently I have been toying with ideas around demonstrating the actual scale of real elephants. I had thought to put something equaling of the weight of an elephant in the gallery. Initially I was thinking cans of baked beans, they are a recognisable weight, people know what it feels like to hold a can of baked beans. A mountain of then stacked up in the gallery would say a lot about the physical scale of elephants. But when I did the maths... it would take 11,765 cans of beans. even if I get them cheap at about $1 a can, that's a lot more money than I've got right now! And when a friend suggested I do it in peanuts, coz that is more obviously linked to the elephant theme, and I saw how light peanuts are and how expensive... well, I thought to myself that maybe this is an idea I can get a grant for and then work with a charity as well, who would perhaps be the beneficiary of all the cans. So in the future perhaps, but right now I needed another idea that would help me describe the scale of elephants. I decided to firstly describe the height. This i felt was the best option because the upcoming show was a group show and there was already some installation works going in. With limited wall space up is always better than accross. I also wanted to put it in context of a comparison with humanity. So i decided to paint a life sized me looking at a life sized elephant. An average height Asian elephant might be around 2.5 meters tall.

There was a large canvass I had in the studio that would serve the purpose well, it was origionally intended for the Now She Remembers show last May in fortyfivedownstairs. It got very close to being in the show but did not make the cut. It just wasn't resolved and I wasn't convinced it would fit in with the rest of the show. Sometimes really good paintings don't make it into a show simply because the others work really well as a group and it doesn't quite fit. I really liked it and wanted to use it somehow later and wanted to work on it some more before I showed it. Unfortunately I then decided to try and paint some red balloons on it and see if it would work in the Project Red Balloon show. That was not a good idea.

So I finally let go of trying to make it work and decided to start fresh with it. I felt a little sad about it but you gotta keep things moving, nothing worse than a studio that is just a graveyard for unresolved paintings.

So there it was, a fresh new start.
I took photos of myself and painted from looking at the camera. I figured out the best height to have it in order to frame the elephant and me, with the intention of then continuing the outline image onto the wall of the gallery.

After some working and re-working I had it pretty right.

This is it in the gallery before I painted on the walls:

and after:

:)

Drawing on Scraps

2009-01-22T22:45:00.000-08:00

This Is Brunswick Arts 2009

2009-01-18T03:40:00.000-08:00

The concept for this show is to have all of us who are involved in the running of Brunswick Arts to have a show together. We are all artists, hence it is an Artist Run Space (ARI). We are also keen to have shows outside of the gallery we spend so much time in and invariably tend to have most of our shows in. I am only a recent official member of the team, but me and a few others in this show have been good helpers of the kids who have been doing it for the last couple of years. It turned out to be a really great show. The work was massively different, but it really gelled.

Some pics from the show:

The opening night was a lot of fun! Even if all the massive cameras and film crews were next door taking photos of the two year old girls paintings! They were good for a two year old, but I'm pretty sure this is not a child prodigy, just a little girl who likes to paint, which is an awesome start for anyone! They were fun and bold.

we're pretty sure our show was better :P

never too young

2009-01-12T05:19:00.000-08:00

I am going to be in a group show called 'This is Brunswick Arts' which opens at Brunswick Street Gallery on Friday. It is a group show for all of us who are part of the Brunswick Arts Space crew, an opportunity to show our work in a different gallery.

Little did we know that another show, one which would get front page coverage in The Age, would be opening on the same night! Lucky us!

Follow this link to read all about it:

http://www.theage.com.au/news/entertainment/arts/my-kid-could-paint-that-toddlers-art-on-show/2009/01/07/1231004105005.html

I personally really love the idea. I'm intrigued to see the work she has produced, if my niece is anything to go by I can imagine some really wonderful art work being hung. There is definitely something lost with self consciousness/cricism and training of the fine motor skills. My niece who is now four, is suddenly very concerned with staying in the lines, and not that I would want her not to develop her coordination, but she has started down a path that will take her all of her life to learn and unlearn, and learn again. Such a double edged sword is (self)consciousness.

(the opening night is Friday the 16th of January, 6-9pm

Runs to 29^th Jan 2009 @ Brunswick Street gallery

322 Brunswick St, Fitzroy. Gallery Hours Wed-Sun 11-6pm)

Elephant Nature Foundation

2008-12-27T17:53:00.000-08:00

Click on this link to see a video by National Geographic about the elephants in Thailand and the elephant park I am going to go to...

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0510/feature5/video.html

The park was established by an amazing Thai woman, Sangduen "Lek" Chailert. Here is her story as taken from their website:

Sangduen "Lek" Chailert was born in 1962 in the small hill tribe village of Baan Lao, two hours north of Chiang Mai. Her love for elephants began when her grandfather, a traditional healer, received a baby elephant as payment for saving a man's life. Lek would spend many hours with her family's new friend, named Tongkum or Golden One, which would result in a passion that would shape the rest of her life.

Lek received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Chiang Mai University, and from there moved into working in the elephant tourist industry. While helping owners of trekking companies locate unemployed elephants, Lek quickly learned about the abuse and neglect that domestic Asian elephants experience.

With a love and respect for her country's national symbol and the knowledge that they were becoming endangered, Lek began advocating for the rights and welfare of Asian elephants in Thailand. In an industry that is steeped in its traditions, advocating for a change to the way domestic and wild Asian elephants are treated has not been an easy battle. But through hard work and determination her voice is beginning to be heard.

In addition to several documentaries about her work by National Geographic, Discovery, Animal Planet, and the BBC, Lek has also been honored to receive many awards. In 2005, Time Magazine named her a Hero of Asia for her work in conservation. The Ford Foundation in association with National Geographic named Lek a Hero of the Planet in 2001. Additionally, she has received two honorary degrees from Rajabaht Chiang Mai University; a PhD in Sustainability and Conservation in 2002, and a PhD in Veterinary Science in 2006. Finally, the National Geographic documentary Vanishing Giants, highlighting Lek's work with the Asian elephant, was recognized by the Humane Society of the United States with the Genesis Award in 2003.

In the coming years Lek hopes to bring her message about conservation and the humane treatment of Asian elephants to more people in and outside of Thailand. She will also continue to improve the lives of the rescued elephants living at Elephant Nature Park and provide emergency healthcare to elephants in remote villages throughout Thailand.

2008-12-17T05:06:00.000-08:00

I went to friends birthday celebrations the other day and she asked us all to share something like a song or a poem, so i pulled out a couple of these to read. I guess it reminded me that it is good to share these things...

I wrote these, amongst others, leading up to the elephant show earlier this year. One of them was used for the show, some lines stolen from the end of it as the title and others as the byline for the show, it was printed in full in the catalog.

Part 1

She does not like this place
She knows it isn’t good
there is something wrong
she has known it for ages
Maybe she is sick
Maybe she is dying

She does not like this place
She knows there are other better places
She’s been there before
She can’t see them now though,
Because of all this mist
So maybe she is wrong
Maybe there is only mist

She does not like this place
She is sunk in smelly, thick goo
It covers almost all of her
Her skin is suffocating
Her nose is clogged with it
Her mind is submerged in it

She does not like this place
She thinks she can hear others
Ones who are somewhere else
But you can’t be sure of these things
Can’t trust your senses
Maybe it is all in your head

She does not like this place…
But at least she knows where she is
She is here, in the mud
With clogged skin and bad smells
Uncomfortable, but predictable; safe

‘I do not like this place’
she thinks to herself,
at last it is put in words.
Once she thought that
she was able to think this:
‘Then, maybe…
Maybe I should move’

Part 2

She steps tentatively down a strangely familiar path
From the edges of her eye she can see a glittering
Behind her a steaming bog, its mud stuck to her skin

She steps carefully through a mess of tangled vines
From the back of her nose she can smell a new thing
The stinking mud cracks, shrinks, itches on her skin

She walks on distracted by sounds almost unheard
Steps out onto sand, into sun and shivers in its heat
she shudders and dusty scabs of muck crumble away

She walks to that glittering, heaving mass of water
Tastes the sweet salt in the air, makes up her mind
The salt spray sticks to her skin, merges with mud

She struggles through waves, lifted, dragged backwards
Still she pushes forward til she is beyond their violence
Skin scoured almost clean by sandy, churned up water

Her legs not touching earth, but treading in vastness
The weight of her self has been taken up and carried
The last of the mud melts and is gently washed away

Now she remembers

Thailand

2008-12-16T16:10:00.000-08:00

I have finally booked my tickets to go to Thailand~
March 2009 will see me working with elephants for a week or two and then traveling around looking at galleries, other elephant centres, universities etc.

As soon as I booked my flights I have had a renewal of energy and inspiration for the elephant theme. I have started envisioning new works, getting excited about what materials I will take on the trip to draw and paint while I am there. Thinking about gettting a really good camera so that I can take amazing shots. I can't wait!!!

C.V.

2008-12-03T20:35:00.000-08:00

Education:
2001 BA Melbourne University (Philosophy and Art History)
2005 Diploma Visual Arts (Post Grad, CAE)

Selected Exhibitions:
2009 Solo Show 'Show and Tell' Pea Green Boat
2008 Solo Show 'Now She Remembers' fortyfive downstairs
2008 Solo Show 'Project Red Balloon' Brunswick Arts

2008 Curated show 'B-Grade' Brunswick Arts

2009 Group Show 'The Impact of Stones' Brunswick Arts
2009 Group Show 'This is Brunswick Arts' Brunswick Street Gallery

Residencies:
2007 Artist in Residence - St Vincent's Hospital Melbourne

Related Experience:
2009 One month stay in Elephant park in Thailand
2009 Joined managing committee of Brunswick Arts Space
2000-2009 various volunteer positions at galleries like fortyfive downstairs and Heide MOMA

B-Grade Opening Night

2008-11-22T19:14:00.001-08:00

Go Genre Everything, playing up a storm.

nice crowd

Mr Benjamin Webb contemplating his work

2008-11-22T19:04:00.000-08:00

B-Grade

2008-10-24T02:22:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure if you would have noticed but horror movies are not in my usual repetoir of subject or inspiration. So it is kind of strange that I am now in the middle of curating a show based on them...

The idea came from chatting to a guy I know. He had been raving about the Peter Jackson group of very b-grade horror movies that he'd made before he shot to super director stardom with Lord of the Rings. Now I had been thinking for a while that movie night at Brunswick Arts would be a great way to get people into the gallery, and so as he talked about it I had visions of b-grade horror movie nights at the gallery. They could run their bar, I'd make popcorn. It'd be great! Then it seemed quite natural to have a group show with the same theme to go with the movie nights. A convaluted and back-to-front way to come across an idea for a show, but there you go.

Curating a group show is a very strange experience. In putting together a solo show I am used to being in control of the whole process, knowing exactly how the works are coming along, how big, small, good, bad, what colour, shape and size each of the works is and how they will all fit together. With this thing I am left with artists telling me they are doing well, the works are coming along and it'll be great, but I have no idea how they will all fit together, I don't even know what some of the artists are making... some of them don't even know yet!!! I won't know til the day they all show up at the gallery with works ready to be installed!

But I can't imagine it could be too bad, I mean the show is based around the b-grade... bad is good... remember??!?!

At the markets

2008-10-02T23:19:00.000-07:00

Lately I have been so busy that I haven't had any time to actually paint... also I have not had any looming deadlines so my thoughts, time and energy get directed to more immediate tasks. I don't mind this, it is part of the ebb and flow of an artists life. I don't think I could paint all day everyday anyway, that takes an aweful lot of stamina! (I know people who do it though!)

At the Sunday Arts at the Convent there is another stallholder, Elise Hurst, who brings her paints along and does some beautiful work while there. She sets up and starts a fresh painting each time and will often finish it on the same day. I have tried sketching and writing and all sorts of other menial tasks at the markets, coz there is usually a fair bit of time between interaction with customers. I always thought I'd get self conscious and distracted and weird if I tried painting in front of people, and it is a lot of fuss and bother to set up and pack up again at the end of the day. But last month at Rose St and then at the Convent I gave it a go... and it was great~!

I think I had been a bit starved of painting time in the studio due to things like moving both my house and studio, having the red balloon show and getting a few more hours a week of gainful employment. So when I set up I was straight into it and loving it. It made the day at the market pass so much faster and feel so much more productive!

These are pics of me revisiting an image I painted a couple of years ago. I had been commissioned to paint an elephant for a special occasion and it was a real pleasure to play with this image. In fact it had been one of my first successful elephant paintings. The original painting has a story attached that I might try and share sometime soon. I've used the image of the original as a card and it is always a popular one. I was surprised at how easily I blocked everyone out and how much I was at ease with people viewing my shambolic process and half finished work.

I will be doing that quite regularly at the markets. People love to watch, though some get quite shy about talking to me... I hope that it doesn't scare people away from buying stuff!!!

If you come to the markets don't be bashful, I still love to talk to people!
:)

since last I wrote

2008-09-10T20:35:00.000-07:00

It has been a while since I last posted to this blog.

The main reason is because I have been consumed by the not insignificant task of moving both house and studio. Me and my cat have moved to the north and the new studio is just slightly to the west.

Before I indulge too much in rapturous details of new studio and living situation I think I should debrief about the red balloon show...

It all went smoothly, opening night was great, red balloons flying around and people having fun with the balloon man. I sold a respectable amount of work and was very happy with the out come...

some setting up shots:

This is how the gallery looked...

I had the upstairs gallery, which worked really well, as it increased a feeling of being up in the clouds with hundreds of red balloons floating around you. I hadn't thought about it before hand but was pleased with the effect.

As the gallery is down a little lane way I put some red balloons on the yellow bike the guys use as advertising for the gallery... I thought it was beautiful!

All sorts of stuff

2008-07-30T23:19:00.000-07:00

I have been painting like a mad woman for this show. I'm really loving the red balloon theme!

Its funny coz the colour red and I have had a checkered history. I have tended to avoid it a bit as too much of it has the capacity to make me a little anxious. This show has proven to be a good way for me and red to become friends, such a whimsical and innocent application and surrounded by and large by friendly blue skies.

I think it would be worth doing a bit of highly rigorous and academic research (on wikipedia) into the psychological impact colours can have on people, particularly the colour red. (That will have to be the subject of another post!)

It will be a totally different opening to the elephant show earlier this year. For a start the venue is different. fortyfive downstairs is an awesome gallery with a reputation as a great inner city gallery that is accessable, dynamic and well respected as a hub for theatre, forums, performance as well as visual art. Brunswick Arts is a funky artist run space down a dodgy lane way in our favourite grungy suburb of Brunswick. Run by a group of young artists it is a lot more experimental and cutting edge. As opposed to the elephant show, which I had been working on for a couple of years and have long term plans in the future of, my plans for this show were to just have fun and break out a bit.

I am having all sorts of fun things going on... like a professional balloon man who makes animals out of balloons, lots of real balloons, a projected slideshow of images and probably access to the blogsite for Project Red Balloon. Oh yeah, also oil paintings and 99 little watercolours :)

I have decided to postpone the Thailand Elephant trip til March next year. I was being a bit unrealistic to think I could fit it in this year... with this balloon show in August, and another show I am curating in November and all of the rest of life and living as well. Yup, planning it for March is instantly less stressful and much more sane!

Red Balloons Show Coming Up

2008-07-19T05:38:00.000-07:00

Hi
It has been a little while since I last blogged on this site... I have been working a lot on my new endeavour "Project Red Balloon"

The idea is to create a cyberspace equivelant of a helium balloon release. I painted 99 individual watercolour balloons and emailed each one to a different person. The idea is that people will forward them on and I'm asking people to let me know when they get one so I can track where they go. So far there have been some really fun and creative responses.

The real world, physical space manifestation of this concept will be presented at a great artist run space in Brunswick, Melbourne. Amongst other things there will be 99 little original watercolours on the wall, there will also be oil paintings, video and installation work....

Where:
Brunswick Arts www.brunswickarts.com.au
2a Little Breese St, Brunswick, 3056 (Melbourne, Australia)

When:
1-16 August 2008

Opening night:
1st August 2008
6-9pm

Gallery Hours:
Thu - Sun 12-5

Come one, come all!

All Things Elephant

2008-06-30T15:05:00.001-07:00

Elephant Art
- Now She Remembers exhibition at fortyfive downstairs in May 2008
- Paintings, Drawings, Etchings

Elephant Nature Foundation

Trip to Thailand

About real elephants

The symbolic Elephant

99 Red Balloons

2008-06-25T04:20:00.000-07:00

...

So I thought I would create a whole new blog for the red balloons project... it is starting to get BIG!

Please go to:
http://projectredballoon.blogspot.com

...

What next? More elephants and... red balloons!

2008-06-07T08:26:00.000-07:00

So the question I have been asked a lot since the show, and even during it... "What are you going to do next?"

The elephant based answer is that I am going to work hard at raising money, applying for grants and working a day job, in order to take a big trip next year. The most minimal level of adventure will be to go to Thailand and work at the Elephant Nature Foundation (there's a link to their site at the bottom of the page) for maybe a month and then come back and use the experience and material I've gained to be the basis of the next big elephant show.

I still feel connected to the subject matter and have a some more ideas that will potentially form the basis of a couple more shows.

The extended version of the trip (relying on funding and my capacity to come up with a satisfactory plan for the living arrangements of my cat) is to go to Thailand and do the volunteer work at the foundation and then go to India and Africa to visit some more elephants and cultures interested in elephants, and finally end up in America, where I would love to do a residency at the Women's Studio Workshop. They are an amazing residency program in the mountains of New York (State). They are a residency program focused on printmaking, paper making, book binding (and I think ceramics and sculpture). As the name implies they only accept women and you get a months worth of accommodation, unlimited printing press access, conversation and acquaintance with other women artists and basically an incredible experience. I'm pretty sure I would have pleanty of material to work with in that month after visiting Thailand, India and Africa!

However, in the mean time I am going to do something a bit different. In order not to get jaded with the elephant theme I think it is going to be important to do a few side projects as well. This year I am going to try curating a show or two and I also have an idea for another show planned for August, and its all about red balloons!

I was watching a performance at fortyfive downstairs called 'The Black Bag' and in it they sung a cover of the 1980's hit song 99 Red Balloons by the German band Nena. I had never really taken much notice of the song, it is quite boppy and fast paced, but the way the performer in this show sung it was slow and melancholy, which revealed the lyrics and made me pay attention to them for the first time...

99 Red Balloons

You and I in a little toy shop
buy a bag of balloons with the money we've got
Set them free at the break of dawn
'Til one by one, they were gone
Back at base, bugs in the software
Flash the message, "Something's out there"
Floating in the summer sky
99 red balloons go by.

99 red balloons floating in the summer sky
Panic bells, it's red alert
There's something here from somewhere red
The war machine springs to life
Opens up one eager eye
Focusing it on the sky
Where 99 red balloons go by.

99 Decision Street, 99 ministers meet
To worry, worry, super-scurry
Call the troops out in a hurry
This is what we've waited for
This is it boys, this is war
The president is on the line
As 99 red balloons go by.

99 Knights of the air
ride super-high-tech jet fighters
Everyone's a Superhero
Everyone's a Captain Kirk
With orders to identify
To clarify and classify
Scramble in the summer sky
As 99 red balloons go by.

99 dreams I have had
In every one a red balloon
It's all over and I'm standin' pretty
In this dust that was a city
If I could find a souvenir
Just to prove the world was here...
And here is a red balloon
I think of you and let it go.

This song got stuck in my head for days, and with it some beautiful rich images of red balloons floating in a summer sky. So I thought I would have a show around that.

I love it as a comment on the folly of war and the ego so often responsible for it, not to mention the impact it has on regular people. But I also have come to see it on a more individual level as a kind of metaphor for the way relationships can flare up over nothing much and then you stand there with the ashes of a friendship or love affair after all the shots have been fired and hurt has been inflicted and there you stand, still alive, but all that was built up is destroyed...

Some thoughts:

Red the colour of passion, love, lust, blood, violence, danger and war. (The German lyrics did not specify that the balloons were red. A 'Luftballon' is a colorful toy balloon, rather than a balloon for transport or research. Kevin McAlea wrote the English version, titled "99 Red Balloons" on an envelope, which he claims to still have, which has a more satirical tone than the original. The English version is not a direct translation of the German but contains a somewhat different set of lyrics. The overall story and sentiment is the same though.)

Balloons, filled with air, usually breathed into by us, our own life force used to inflate them.

A Shakespearean quality to the folly, needless waste and tragedy. A joke, or playful moment gone terribly wrong.

City is civilisation, the slow build up of effort, industry, care and planning. Cities are the controlling and taming of the wild, a 'civilised' nation or person is one who is cultivated, educated, mature. It is logic, intelligence and control.

What goes wrong is random, a mistake, a misunderstanding. Chaos plays a hand. But the city is also destroyed by ego, war lust, carelessness, over-inflated fears and desire for domination over others... control gone out of control... and that dichotomous (and false) mindset of kill/die, destroy or be destroyed, control or be controlled.

Toy shop and balloons, are all innocence... it is almost an archetypal tale of a child learning the devastating power of their newly developed passions as they hit adolescence and emerge into adulthood.

The end of a show

2008-06-07T08:00:00.000-07:00

...
So Saturday the 31st was the last day of the show. I spent the day at the gallery and met a lot of people who couldn't make the opening or any other time during the week. It was lovely to see so many people.

The gallery closes technically at 4pm, after which I could take down the works. Unfortunately they had a theater performance at 5pm downstairs so I only had a one hour window of opportunity to get all the paintings out and clean up the place, i.e. putty up the walls and sweep the floor a bit. I could have come in on Sunday morning, but I had the bad timing of having that Sunday be the first Sunday of the month and thus had my stand at Sunday Arts at the Convent that day, so Saturday night it was!

I had to take all the works down and bubble wrap them for transportation. The sold works that were being picked up at the gallery I was able to leave in the store room out the back... but they had to be labeled and wrapped extra carefully.

I had to take all the numbers off the walls, take the nails out of the walls and then push some putty into the holes they left.

It was a bit sad and empty, but also felt quite satisfying to have a gallery of empty walls and only the spotlights to show where the paintings had been. A definite sense of completion and accomplishment. The show is over and I think a success! Yay!

Opening Night

2008-05-30T17:42:00.000-07:00

...
The opening night was FUN!

I had my name up, not in lights, but in the visual art world's equivalent... up in black.

It was an awesome night. A great crowd and, though it may seem kind of obvious when you think about it, I was surprised at the fact that I knew everyone... It was kind of like having a birthday party, unlike other people's parties where you know one or two people, when it is your party - you know everyone! Very fun.

Got a few red dots up on the wall, which is very encouraging!

I made a speech. I didn't plan it much, but I knew I wanted to dedicate the show to my grandmother who passed away around this time last year. She was definitely the matriarch of our family and always my best patron and supporter. I think I have been blessed by a super supportive family, and Granny especially was always so positive and affirming.

I had a few 'thanks you's to make as well. Firstly to the wonderful, wonderful women who run fortyfive downstairs, the gallery. Their advice and support and generosity really got me through in far greater style than I would have managed on my own. And also to St Vincent's Hospital Melbourne. Last year I had the absolute luxury to spend a year on the tenth floor of the old nurses quarters looking out over an amazing view of Carlton Gardens with all of the northern suburbs of Melbourne stretched out below - especially beautiful at night. St Vincent's Hospital have an artist in residence program where you can apply for a free studio for a set amount of time and in return you give them an art work. The curator of the residency program was at my opening, demonstrating how much genuine care and interest they take in you.

A beautiful bunch of flowers from some friends

Philippa and Alix who work at fortyfive downstairs

Overall a really fantastic night. (Aside from the red wine spilled all over my dress right at the start by my grasping handed baby nephew, that'll learn me for putting a glass of wine in baby reaching distance! But then that is why you wear black to an opening!)

And... the benefit of an early opening is that it was finished by 7pm, so even though we went out for some food and drinks after, I was home and snug in bed before midnight!

Behind the Scenes 3

2008-05-26T17:09:00.000-07:00

Hanging the show...

My friend Benjamin 'The Art God'* Webb installed my show for me last night at the gallery. He is a professional art installer, yay for friends with benefits! (not like that!!!) He charged me the grand sum of a six pack and dinner at the Shanghai Dumpling House.

I had dropped all the works off the night before and placed them around the walls in the order I wanted them hung. We met at 5.30pm and were done by 8ish. This is what it all looked like...

First you measure,

then you hammer,

Then you use the dodgy $3.99 spirit level from the Two Dollar shop on Sydney Rd to make sure it is all straight,

And hey presto, you have a show! Yay!

Now all I have to do is create labels for the walls, type out and print the price list, artist statement, and CV, get all the food and wine, make sure I have invited everyone, brainstorm for the speech...

*Ben is a shy retiring flower, he would never admit he is an Art God, and he would certainly never tell me to write that... but I do what I can to promote my friends!

Behind the Scenes 2

2008-05-22T17:13:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd give a little glimpse of the work and chaos that goes on behind the scenes. This is my studio space...

As you can see it is very full of STUFF. I have all of my stock for the markets stored there, I have all of the art materials I have ever purchased stored there (I work in an art shop - enough said)Sometimes I find it hard to move, and a few weeks ago I decided to take control, clean it up, find places for things to live so the the table and floor were not totally consumed by these important but generally unused objects.

I had just got it into a certain amount of order when we had that rain a week or so ago... and I discovered the place leaks! So I had to move all items that were stacked against the back wall into the middle of the space. Never try to escape chaos... it will find you.

I was a bit stressed about the show and had found an afternoon to be in the studio. And it was lucky I was in my studio when it happened, so I could move it all and track where the drips were coming in, but it meant that instead of having a productive afternoon I had a damage control afternoon, and all of my attempted order was reversed in a matter of half an hour.

I still have a bucket propped up against the window and it catches those drips that hit the window sill and then splatter out, then there is also the leak that slides sneakily down the wall. Luckily it was never enough water to form a puddle or a stream. But I will take not chances and will have to devise a way to lift all my folios - full of paper - off the ground.

Studios and flooding seem to go hand in hand for me. I've had two others that flooded much worse than this in the past, so it is ok, but still nerve wracking, to have a little leak. Every time it rains I am now worried in case this is the day the roof decided to fall in and soak everything in muddy water.

that has happened before...

Behind the Scenes 1

2008-05-15T14:53:00.000-07:00

So the show is only a week away. Most things are ready, I have got some prints in the shop getting framed, they should be ready on Monday. I have helped fortyfive downstairs with the mailout, sticking address labels on envelopes and stuffing mine and another invitation into them. The gallery has also sent out a media release, so with any luck I will get a little bit of media attention, hopefully good! I have mostly finished all the paintings, some I am still not sure about, so there may be some work to do there. Then of course they all have to be signed and have hanging wire put on the back. I have organised a friend of mine, who runs a gallery and regularly hangs shows, to help hang the show on Monday the 26th. I have got my secret team (mum) on the case to help me with food for the opening night. I am investigating the possibility of getting some nice organic red wine for the opening... it is all rolling along. Oh yeah, I still have to type up the price list and artist statement.

So that is the nuts and bolts of getting this thing happening. I am feeling reasonably confident, but have had my moments of blind panic this month, don't worry about that! I think it has been really wonderful to work with a gallery like fortyfive downstairs. Their expertise and the fact that they put on so many shows means that they have a time frame and system for getting things done. For example the invitations would have been pushed aside and put off till the opening night itself if it had been left to me. But because they needed them done I had to get it together! So I had to make the hard decisions, like which image to use, what words to put with it, what to call it... all that stuff that I resist, procrastinate about and try really hard to avoid. They were also really supportive and offered some good advice in the midst of all of those decisions. Alix, who works there, said a couple of time 'I think that's good' and that was all I needed to settle that raging bull of insecurity, thus allowing a decision to be made. They really are a great team; Mary Lou, Philippa and Alix.

Elephants and post-traumatic stress (Part 3)

2008-05-06T03:00:00.000-07:00

From the same article (An Elephant Crackup? written by Andres Serrano for The New York Times) this tells of the work of the Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee, USA, a 2,700-acre rehabilitation center and retirement facility which has taken in many disturbed or old elephants, may of which have lived almost their entire lives in zoos or circuses. It tells of how they have been successful using human trauma recovery techniques with the elephants. It also begins to argue the logical conclusion to such realisations about the nature of elephant psychology... that is, that we can no longer deny our relationship and our responsibility to them.

"And yet just as we now understand that elephants hurt like us, we’re learning that they can heal like us as well. Indeed, Misty has become a testament to the Elephant Sanctuary’s signature ‘‘passive control’’ system, a therapy tailored in many ways along the lines of those used to treat human sufferers of post-traumatic stress disorder. Passive control, as a sanctuary newsletter describes it, depends upon ‘‘knowledge of how elephants process information and respond to stress’’ as well as specific knowledge of each elephant’s past response to stress. Under this so-called nondominance system, there is no discipline, retaliation or withholding of food, water and treats, which are all common tactics of elephant trainers. Great pains are taken, meanwhile, to afford the elephants both a sense of safety and freedom of choice — two mainstays of human trauma therapy — as well as continual social interaction.

Upon her arrival at the Elephant Sanctuary, Misty seemed to sense straight off the different vibe of her new home. When Scott Blais of the sanctuary went to free Misty’s still-chained leg a mere day after she’d arrived, she stood peaceably by, practically offering her leg up to him. Over her many months of quarantine, meanwhile, with only humans acting as a kind of surrogate elephant family, she has consistently gone through the daily rigors of her tuberculosis treatments — involving two caretakers, a team of veterinarians and the use of a restraining chute in which harnesses are secured about her chest and tail — without any coaxing or pressure. ‘‘We’ll shower her with praise in the barn afterwards,’’ Buckley told me as Misty stood by, chomping on a mouthful of hay, ‘‘and she actually purrs with pleasure. The whole barn vibrates.’’

Of course, Misty’s road to recovery — when viewed in light of her history and that of all the other captive elephants, past and present — is as harrowing as it is heartening. She and the others have suffered, we now understand, not simply because of us, but because they are, by and large, us. If as recently as the end of the Vietnam War people were still balking at the idea that a soldier, for example, could be physically disabled by psychological harm — the idea, in other words, that the mind is not an entity apart from the body and therefore just as woundable as any limb — we now find ourselves having to make an equally profound and, for many, even more difficult leap: that a fellow creature as ostensibly unlike us in every way as an elephant is as precisely and intricately woundable as we are. And while such knowledge naturally places an added burden upon us, the keepers, that burden is now being greatly compounded by the fact that sudden violent outbursts like Misty’s can no longer be dismissed as the inevitable isolated revolts of a restless few against the constraints and abuses of captivity.

They have no future without us. The question we are now forced to grapple with is whether we would mind a future without them, among the more mindful creatures on this earth and, in many ways, the most devoted. Indeed, the manner of the elephants’ continued keeping, their restoration and conservation, both in civil confines and what’s left of wild ones, is now drawing the attention of everyone from naturalists to neuroscientists. Too much about elephants, in the end — their desires and devotions, their vulnerability and tremendous resilience — reminds us of ourselves to dismiss out of hand this revolt they’re currently staging against their own dismissal. And while our concern may ultimately be rooted in that most human of impulses — the preservation of our own self-image — the great paradox about this particular moment in our history with elephants is that saving them will require finally getting past ourselves; it will demand the ultimate act of deep, interspecies empathy.

On a more immediate, practical level, as Gay Bradshaw sees it, this involves taking what has been learned about elephant society, psychology and emotion and inculcating that knowledge into the conservation schemes of researchers and park rangers. This includes doing things like expanding elephant habitat to what it used to be historically and avoiding the use of culling and translocations as conservation tools. ‘‘If we want elephants around,’’ Bradshaw told me, ‘‘then what we need to do is simple: learn how to live with elephants. In other words, in addition to conservation, we need to educate people how to live with wild animals like humans used to do, and to create conditions whereby people can live on their land and live with elephants without it being this life-and-death situation.’’

The other part of our newly emerging compact with elephants, however, is far more difficult to codify. It requires nothing less than a fundamental shift in the way we look at animals and, by extension, ourselves. It requires what Bradshaw somewhat whimsically refers to as a new ‘‘trans-species psyche,’’ a commitment to move beyond an anthropocentric frame of reference and, in effect, be elephants. Two years ago, Bradshaw wrote a paper for the journal Society and Animals, focusing on the work of the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust in Kenya, a sanctuary for orphaned and traumatized wild elephants — more or less the wilderness-based complement to Carol Buckley’s trauma therapy at the Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee. The trust’s human caregivers essentially serve as surrogate mothers to young orphan elephants, gradually restoring their psychological and emotional well being to the point at which they can be reintroduced into existing wild herds. The human ‘‘allomothers’’ stay by their adopted young orphans’ sides, even sleeping with them at night in stables. The caretakers make sure, however, to rotate from one elephant to the next so that the orphans grow fond of all the keepers. Otherwise an elephant would form such a strong bond with one keeper that whenever he or she was absent, that elephant would grieve as if over the loss of another family member, often becoming physically ill itself.

To date, the Sheldrick Trust has successfully rehabilitated more than 60 elephants and reintroduced them into wild herds. A number of them have periodically returned to the sanctuary with their own wild-born calves in order to reunite with their human allomothers and to introduce their offspring to what — out on this uncharted frontier of the new ‘‘trans-species psyche’’ — is now being recognized, at least by the elephants, it seems, as a whole new subspecies: the human allograndmother. ‘‘Traditionally, nature has served as a source of healing for humans,’’ Bradshaw told me. ‘‘Now humans can participate actively in the healing of both themselves and nonhuman animals. The trust and the sanctuary are the beginnings of a mutually benefiting interspecies culture.’’

Elephants and post-traumatic stress (Part 2)

2008-05-06T02:52:00.000-07:00

Another section of the same article (An Elephant Crackup? written by Andres Serrano for The New York Times)

This describes the work and observations of a woman called Eve Abe, who saw a pronounced and very clear correlation between the behaviour of the traumatised young elephants and traumatised human children of war torn Uganda...

"Eve Abe... [is an] animal ethologist and wildlife-management consultant now based in London, Abe (pronounced AH-bay) grew up in northern Uganda. After several years of studying elephants in Queen Elizabeth National Park, where decades of poaching had drastically reduced the herds, Abe received her doctorate at Cambridge University in 1994 for work detailing the parallels she saw between the plight of Uganda’s orphaned male elephants and the young male orphans of her own people, the Acholi, whose families and villages have been decimated by years of civil war. It’s work she proudly proclaims to be not only ‘‘the ultimate act of anthropomorphism’’ but also what she was destined to do.

Abe began her studies in Queen Elizabeth National Park in 1982, as an undergraduate at Makerere University in Kampala, shortly after she and her family, who’d been living for years as refugees in Kenya to escape the brutal violence in Uganda under the dictatorship of Idi Amin, returned home in the wake of Amin’s ouster in 1979. Abe told me that when she first arrived at the park, there were fewer than 150 elephants remaining from an original population of nearly 4,000. The bulk of the decimation occurred during the war with Tanzania that led to Amin’s overthrow: soldiers from both armies grabbed all the ivory they could get their hands on — and did so with such cravenness that the word ‘‘poaching’’ seems woefully inadequate. ‘‘Normally when you say ‘poaching,’ ’’ Abe said, ‘‘you think of people shooting one or two and going off. But this was war. They’d just throw hand grenades at the elephants, bring whole families down and cut out the ivory. I call that mass destruction.’’

The last elephant survivors of Queen Elizabeth National Park, Abe said, never left one another’s side. They kept in a tight bunch, moving as one. Only one elderly female remained; Abe estimated her to be at least 62. It was this matriarch who first gathered the survivors together from their various hideouts on the park’s forested fringes and then led them back out as one group into open savanna. Until her death in the early 90’s, the old female held the group together, the population all the while slowly beginning to rebound. In her yet-to-be-completed memoir, ‘‘My Elephants and My People,’’ Abe writes of the prominence of the matriarch in Acholi society; she named the park’s matriarchal elephant savior Lady Irene, after her own mother. ‘‘It took that core group of survivors in the park about five or six years,’’ Abe told me, ‘‘before I started seeing whole new family units emerge and begin to split off and go their own way.’’

In 1986, Abe’s family was forced to flee the country again. Violence against Uganda’s people and elephants never completely abated after Amin’s regime collapsed, and it drastically worsened in the course of the full-fledged war that developed between government forces and the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army. For years, that army’s leader, Joseph Kony, routinely ‘‘recruited’’ from Acholi villages, killing the parents of young males before their eyes, or sometimes having them do the killings themselves, before pressing them into service as child soldiers. The Lord’s Resistance Army has by now been largely defeated, but Kony, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for numerous crimes against humanity, has hidden with what remains of his army in the mountains of Murchison Falls National Park, and more recently in Garamba National Park in northern Congo, where poaching by the Lord’s Resistance Army has continued to orphan more elephants.

‘‘I started looking again at what has happened among the Acholi and the elephants,’’ Abe told me. ‘‘I saw that it is an absolute coincidence between the two. You know we used to have villages. We still don’t have villages. There are over 200 displaced-people’s camps in present-day northern Uganda. Everybody lives now within these camps, and there are no more elders. The elders were systematically eliminated. The first batch of elimination was during Amin’s time, and that set the stage for the later destruction of northern Uganda. We are among the lucky few, because my mom and dad managed to escape. But the families there are just broken. I know many of them. Displaced people are living in our home now. My mother said let them have it. All these kids who have grown up with their parents killed — no fathers, no mothers, only children looking after them. They don’t go to schools. They have no schools, no hospitals. No infrastructure. They form these roaming, violent, destructive bands. It’s the same thing that happens with the elephants. Just like the male war orphans, they are wild, completely lost.’’

‘‘I remember when I first was working on my doctorate,’’ she said. ‘‘I mentioned that I was doing this parallel once to a prominent scientist in Kenya. He looked amazed. He said, ‘How come nobody has made this connection before?’ I told him because it hadn’t happened this way to anyone else’s tribe before. To me it’s something I see so clearly. Most people are scared of showing that kind of anthropomorphism. But coming from me it doesn’t sound like I’m inventing something. It’s there. People know it’s there. Some might think that the way I describe the elephant attacks makes the animals look like people. But people are animals.’’

For de Zulueta, the parallel that Abe draws between the plight of war orphans, human and elephant, is painfully apt, yet also provides some cause for hope, given the often startling capacity of both animals for recovery. She told me that one Ugandan war orphan she is currently treating lost all the members of his family except for two older brothers. Remarkably, one of those brothers, while serving in the Ugandan Army, rescued the younger sibling from the Lord’s Resistance Army; the older brother’s unit had captured the rebel battalion in which his younger brother had been forced to fight.

The two brothers eventually made their way to London, and for the past two years, the younger brother has been going through a gradual process of recovery in the care of Maudsley Hospital. Much of the rehabilitation, according to de Zulueta, especially in the early stages, relies on the basic human trauma therapy principles now being applied to elephants: providing decent living quarters, establishing a sense of safety and of attachment to a larger community and allowing freedom of choice. After that have come the more complex treatments tailored to the human brain’s particular cognitive capacities: things like reliving the original traumatic experience and being taught to modulate feelings through early detection of hyperarousal and through breathing techniques. And the healing of trauma, as de Zulueta describes it, turns out to have physical correlatives in the brain just as its wounding does.

‘‘What I say is, we find bypass,’’ she explained. ‘‘We bypass the wounded areas using various techniques. Some of the wounds are not healable. Their scars remain. But there is hope because the brain is an enormous computer, and you can learn to bypass its wounds by finding different methods of approaching life. Of course there may be moments when something happens and the old wound becomes unbearable. Still, people do recover. The boy I’ve been telling you about is 18 now, and he has survived very well in terms of his emotional health and capacities. He’s a lovely, lovely man. And he’s a poet. He writes beautiful poetry.’’

Elephants and post-traumatic stress (Part 1)

2008-05-06T02:31:00.000-07:00

The following is an excerpt from an article called An Elephant Crackup? written by Andres Serrano for The New York Times.

It describes the consequences of poaching and controlled culling on elephant societies and argues that the psychological trauma suffered by the elephants is almost identical to that suffered by humans who are diagnosed with post traumatic stress or shock. What is particularly fascinating is that it appears that the same methods of treatment as used to treat us can also help elephants recover.

"[The] fabric of elephant society, Bradshaw and her colleagues concluded, had effectively been frayed by years of habitat loss and poaching, along with systematic culling by government agencies to control elephant numbers and translocations of herds to different habitats. The number of older matriarchs and female caregivers (or ‘‘allomothers’’) had drastically fallen, as had the number of elder bulls, who play a significant role in keeping younger males in line. In parts of Zambia and Tanzania, a number of the elephant groups studied contained no adult females whatsoever. In Uganda, herds were often found to be ‘‘semipermanent aggregations,’’ as a paper written by Bradshaw describes them, with many females between the ages of 15 and 25 having no familial associations.

As a result of such social upheaval, calves are now being born to and raised by ever younger and inexperienced mothers. Young orphaned elephants, meanwhile, that have witnessed the death of a parent at the hands of poachers are coming of age in the absence of the support system that defines traditional elephant life. ‘‘The loss of elephant elders,’’ Bradshaw told me, ‘‘and the traumatic experience of witnessing the massacres of their family, impairs normal brain and behavior development in young elephants.’’

What Bradshaw and her colleagues describe would seem to be an extreme form of anthropocentric conjecture if the evidence that they’ve compiled from various elephant resesarchers, even on the strictly observational level, weren’t so compelling. The elephants of decimated herds, especially orphans who’ve watched the death of their parents and elders from poaching and culling, exhibit behavior typically associated with post-traumatic stress disorder and other trauma-related disorders in humans: abnormal startle response, unpredictable asocial behavior, inattentive mothering and hyperaggression. Studies of the various assaults on the rhinos in South Africa, meanwhile, have determined that the perpetrators were in all cases adolescent males that had witnessed their families being shot down in cullings. It was common for these elephants to have been tethered to the bodies of their dead and dying relatives until they could be rounded up for translocation to, as Bradshaw and Schore describe them, ‘‘locales lacking traditional social hierarchy of older bulls and intact natal family structures.’’

In fact, even the relatively few attempts that park officials have made to restore parts of the social fabric of elephant society have lent substance to the elephant-breakdown theory. When South African park rangers recently introduced a number of older bull elephants into several destabilized elephant herds in Pilanesburg and Addo, the wayward behavior — including unusually premature hormonal changes among the adolescent elephants — abated.

But according to Bradshaw and her colleagues, the various pieces of the elephant-trauma puzzle really come together at the level of neuroscience, or what might be called the physiology of psychology, by which scientists can now map the marred neuronal fields, snapped synaptic bridges and crooked chemical streams of an embattled psyche. Though most scientific knowledge of trauma is still understood through research on human subjects, neural studies of elephants are now under way. (The first functional M.R.I. scan of an elephant brain, taken this year, revealed, perhaps not surprisingly, a huge hippocampus, a seat of memory in the mammalian brain, as well as a prominent structure in the limbic system, which processes emotions.) Allan Schore, the U.C.L.A. psychologist and neuroscientist who for the past 15 years has focused his research on early human brain development and the negative impact of trauma on it, recently wrote two articles with Bradshaw on the stress-related neurobiological underpinnings of current abnormal elephant behavior.

‘‘We know that these mechanisms cut across species,’’ Schore told me. ‘‘In the first years of humans as well as elephants, development of the emotional brain is impacted by these attachment mechanisms, by the interaction that the infant has with the primary caregiver, especially the mother. When these early experiences go in a positive way, it leads to greater resilience in things like affect regulation, stress regulation, social communication and empathy. But when these early experiences go awry in cases of abuse and neglect, there is a literal thinning down of the essential circuits in the brain, especially in the emotion-processing areas.’’

For Bradshaw, these continuities between human and elephant brains resonate far outside the field of neuroscience. ‘‘Elephants are suffering and behaving in the same ways that we recognize in ourselves as a result of violence,’’ she told me. ‘‘It is entirely congruent with what we know about humans and other mammals. Except perhaps for a few specific features, brain organization and early development of elephants and humans are extremely similar. That’s not news. What is news is when you start asking, What does this mean beyond the science? How do we respond to the fact that we are causing other species like elephants to psychologically break down? In a way, it’s not so much a cognitive or imaginative leap anymore as it is a political one.’’

Exhibition Openings

2008-04-14T18:18:00.000-07:00

I have my show coming up VERY SOON (scary!) So lately I have been paying as much attention to how people are presenting the show as I am to the artwork involved in the show.

Most openings are pretty standard, you have drinks, occasionally there is food as well, people stand around and drink and talk and if it is a really successful night you don't really look at the artwork at all because there are too many people blocking your view! There are price lists on a table somewhere, sometimes a blurb about the artist and the work as well... and if they can afford it a glossy brochure with coloured pics. People can organize speeches, but not everyone worries about this...

Occasionally people do things differently, incorporate elements of performance or audience participation. For example Marco Luccio recently had an opening at Steps Gallery on Lygon St and he had an opera singer perform! It was wonderful; an extra element of entertainment never goes astray. But it must be admitted that by and large they are just that – entertainment, creating atmosphere or ambience, but not significantly value adding to the work or my experience of the work.

A good friend of mine, Jenny Mitchell, recently had an exhibition. She did the whole lot food, drinks, performance… and somehow managed to create a whole other level of meaning for me.

I have been friends with her since doing the diploma together, so I have been privy to a certain extent to the thought process she went through in planning the show, getting the works ready and organizing the opening night. We have sat at Lentil As Anything at the Abbottsford Convent sipping tea as she ran ideas by me, though I can't say I contributed much except to say 'Wow, that sounds great Jenny!’

In the last few weeks before the show I was snowed under with concerns of my own so I wasn't able to help her in the final stages. When I went to the opening night I thought I knew what was coming and what to expect... and I did, as the plan hadn't changed much, it was the way it came together that blew me away. And, as so often happens, I think I actually found more/different meaning in it than Jenny had consciously chosen to communicate.

This is what I knew:
Jenny has been learning the cello in the last year or so and she wanted to play it on the opening night. She would play it while a digital slideshow was projected onto a wall next to her, a collage of quotes and images and an exploration of her thoughts about life, art and the journey she has taken over the last year in recovering from a severe breakdown. After that she would pull back a wall of fabric that had been hiding the room that actually held her paintings and people would be able to enter and see the works.

This is what I experienced:
The slide show gently drifted between images of her artwork, as yet unveiled, shown in abstract fragments, overlaid with snippets of poetry and her own words... elegant, restrained and yet so generous. She managed to talk about the darkest times she has had in the last year, she did not hide it, but neither did she fall into an indulgence of self-revelation. For me she hit a perfect balance. The music she had chosen was a most beautiful and haunting piece. These two alone (if the music had been played by someone else or on a CD player) would have been moving enough - but what really resonated and created for me a much more profound experience was all of this in combination with the physical reality of a person I hold dear to me, who I know has gone through hell in the last year, creating that music as we watched.

As she sat in front of us moving the bow and creating those resonances in sound, I became intimately aware of the other levels of movement and lived experience that it took to create the artwork, and write the words. I could see her in her studio moving the brush, mixing the paint. I could imagine what it must have been like to live the everyday (and every night) experience of a breakdown. The struggle to keep moving at all.

As the music progressed it moved into a more hopeful and gentle passage as Jenny neared the end of slideshow with words of hope and recovery. What the music and moving images did was not just move me to a deeper connection to the lived experience of creation, but it also tied in with a theme Jenny had been exploring in her words, which was the perception of and experience of time.

I have pondered the nature of music, art and time prior to this show. It has fascinated me how music is so linked to time. A painting or work of visual art is still; traditionally it is complete when presented to the public. You look at it and even if you spend time with it, and your thoughts move and shift in response to it, it in itself remains still, the same as when you first started looking at it. Music, on the other hand, is dependant on time. You cannot experience it without time, one moment follows another and one note follows another. The preceding notes set us up to experience the next. A gentle progression or a dramatic divergence from what went before helps create the mood. The way it takes some time to digest the stimulus of sound and our capacity to remember what went before allows the music to take us on a journey and tell a story. This experience is much closer to the reality of living life than the absolute stillness of a painting.

I think this is perhaps something to do with why I often enjoy creating paintings and going on that journey through time and colour to the finished product, more than I do looking at the finished work in a gallery. I suppose also that when my own works are finished they still resonate with that story that was told in the creation, something that the viewer does not have access to. I think, also, this is one reason how it can be that I love one painting so much and not another – yet people looking at them often have a very different connection.

So I think what happened for me was a wonderful fusion of all of those thoughts and feelings. It powerfully brought home the physical reality of her life. What we were reading was a lived experience for this person in front of us. The actions and movements of her mind, soul and body physically created the artwork we would soon be seeing. In exactly the same way as the cello was being played, in that moment and the next... and the next. And so too would her life go on, this show was just one in a long progression of lived moments. They would all slide into and onto each other like the notes of the music. It is a testament to her skill as an artist that she could take the experiences and memories of her life last year, I’m pretty sure many of which were not at all pretty or graceful, and shape them into something so poetic and beautiful.

The most poignant part, that which opened the door even wider to all of these thoughts and feelings, was that she did not play it perfectly. She played it astonishingly well, considering she had only been learning for a year. But every now and then a note was a little frail, or a little wobbly or a little short. That imperfection spoke volumes about the fragility of human ambitions. It spoke of the nature of learning (another journey; a thing that can only happen over time) and it described so perfectly the difference between what we aspire to and what, in our humanity, we achieve. I felt so much tenderness for humanity in that moment, for our attempts, our dreams, our limitations, our little and our big failings… and our courage in the attempts we make.

2008-04-13T17:29:00.000-07:00

Daphne Sheldrick on Elephants

2008-04-09T20:19:00.000-07:00

The following is an excerpt from an article I found in my various searchings of the net. It is written by a woman called Daphne Sheldrick, an incredible woman - the first person in the world to successfully hand rear newborn fully milk dependent African Elephant orphan.

For more information about this amazing woman go to: http://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org/html/about_daphne_sheldrick.html)

ELEPHANT EMOTION
By Daphne Sheldrick D.B.E.: 1992 UNEP Global 500 Laureate.

For the full text please go to:
http://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org/html/elephant_emotion.html

“Why is it that most people feel such empathy for Elephants, even if they have never had close contact with them?

Is it because of their size, their quaint characteristics, or the the fact that they are so incredibly endearing as babies, tripping over little wobbly trunks that seem to serve no useful purpose other than get in the way? Or is it, perhaps, because Elephants are "human" animals, encompassed by an invisible aura that reaches deep into the human soul in a mysterious and mystifying way.

Of course, Elephants share with us humans many traits - the same span of life, (three score years and ten, all being well) and they develop at a parallel pace so that at any given age a baby elephant duplicates its human counterpart, reaching adulthood at the age of twenty. Elephants also display many of the attributes of humans as well as some of the failings. They share with us a strong sense of family and death and they feel many of the same emotions. Each one is, of course, like us, a unique individual with its own unique personality. They can be happy or sad, volatile or placid. They display envy, jealousy, throw tantrums and are fiercely competitive, and they can develop hang-ups which are reflected in behaviour. They also have many additional attributes we humans lack; incredible long range infrasound, communicating in voices we never hear, such sophisticated hearing that even a footfall is heard far away, and, of course they have a memory that far surpasses ours and spans a lifetime. They grieve deeply for lost loved ones, even shedding tears and suffering depression. They have a sense of compassion that projects beyond their own kind and sometimes extends to others in distress. They help one another in adversity, miss an absent loved one, and when you know them really well, you can see that they even smile when having fun and are happy.

I have been privileged to live amongst elephants (and other animals too) all my life, observing them in a wild situation for over 30 years, and hand-rearing their orphaned young for just as long. But it has been the rearing of the infant milk dependent babies that has given me an in-depth insight into the elephant psyche…

… The saga of our orphans is an ongoing story that will undoubtedly outlive most of us, God willing. I like the words of Henry Beston, from "The Outmost House," and especially so since they were written in 1928, a period when all most people knew about animals, was how to kill them.

"We need another and wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals .... In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings, they are other Nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth"

Blind Men and Elephants

2008-04-02T22:32:00.000-07:00

I think most people will be familiar with the ancient tale of the blind men and the elephant. I found this humorous variation online and thought I would share it...

Five Blind Men and an Elephant*

being by
Reverend Loveshade

Episkopos of the Discordian Division of the Ek-sen-triks CluborGuild who ripped it off from the Hindus/Jainists

* From the non-existent Apocrypha Discordia,
unauthorized companion to the Principia Discordia

(We realize that, in the era of the very late 20th Century as this is being written, the title and content of this story are politically incorrect. We apologize for any discomfort, but ask you to remember that the original story was created long before political correctness, and is not intended in any way to be offensive to elephants.)

One day five blind men, who knew nothing of elephants, went to examine one to find out what it was. Reaching out randomly, each touched it in a different spot. One man touched the side, one an ear, one a leg, one a tusk, and one the trunk. Each satisfied that he now knew the true nature of the beast, they all sat down to discuss it.

“We now know that the elephant is like a wall,” said the one who touched the side. “The evidence is conclusive.”

“I believe you are mistaken, sir," said the one who touched an ear. "The elephant is more like a large fan."

“You are both wrong,” said the leg man. “The creature is obviously like a tree.”

“A tree?” questioned the tusk toucher. “How can you mistake a spear for a tree?”

“What?” said the trunk feeler. “A spear is long and round, but anyone knows it doesn’t move. Couldn’t you feel the muscles? It’s definitely a type of snake! A blind man could see that!” said the fifth blind man.

The argument grew more heated, and finally escalated into a battle, for each of the five had followers. This became known as the Battle of the Five Armies (not to be mistaken for the one described by that Tolkien fellow).

However, before they could totally destroy themselves, a blind, self-declared Discordian oracle came along to see what all the fuss was about. While they were beating the crap out of each other, she examined the elephant. But instead of stopping after one feel, she touched the whole thing, including the tail, which felt like a rope. “It’s just a big animal with big sides, ears, feet, tusk teeth, nose and a skinny tail,” she thought. “What a bunch of fools these guys are.”

She then said “Stop! I have discovered the truth. I know who is right.”

She being an oracle and all, they stopped and listened and said “tell us!”

“I have examined the elephant with mine own two hands,” she said, “and I find that you are all right.”

“How can this be?” they asked. “Can an elephant be a wall and a fan and a tree and a spear and a snake?” And they were sorely confused.

She explained “the elephant is a great Tree, and on this tree grow leaves like great Fans to give most wondrous shade and fan the breeze. And the branches of this tree are like Spears to protect it. For this is the Tree of Creation and of Eternal Life, and the Great Serpent hangs still upon it.

“Unfortunately, it is hidden behind a great Wall, which is why it was not discovered until this very day. It cannot be reached by normal means.

“However I, in my wisdom, have discovered a Most Holy Rope, by which the wall may be climbed. And if one touches the tree in the proper manner which I alone know, you will gain Eternal Life.”

They all became highly interested in this, of course.

She then named an extremely high price for her services (Eternal Life doesn’t come cheap), and made quite a bundle.

Moral: Anyone can lead blind men to an elephant, but a Discordian can charge admission.

My Exhibitions

2008-03-23T16:00:00.000-07:00

May 2008 - Now She Remembers
Aug 2008 - Project Red Balloon
Nov 2008 - B-Grade
Jan 2009 - This is Brunswick Arts
May 2009 - Show and Tell
Jun 2009 - The Impact Of Stones

Reflections on Artist's Market and Art

2008-03-20T17:35:00.000-07:00

I tend to get to Rose St early - say 9am (the market starts at 11am). At Rose St they allocate the spots and provide these great wooden boxes of different shapes and sizes to display your stuff on and they also have big sun umbrellas to offer shade to those who don't have a marquee. But if you want an umbrella and if you want good boxes to display your stuff you need to get there reasonably early. So I cart all my stuff from the car and start setting up my display - cards I have designed, sketch books I have covered with beautiful papers, prints carefully wrapped and labeled, and of course paintings. I usually have a range of small paintings which are affordable and easy to carry home from the markets. I do also like to bring at least one big painting - say 1m sq, just to give an indication of the breadth of my work. I don't expect to sell them at the market, as people don't really come to the market prepared to spend several hundred or even a thousand dollars on an art work! So they are really just for show. But even in regards to the smaller paintings or prints, people will often come back several times before they decide to buy something. I think it is a much harder thing to decide to purchase than a pair or earrings for the same price. My theory about that is that people feel like they can just throw a pair of earrings or a t-shirt into a box or leave it on a hanger and not wear it if they get tired of it... but art work people feel obliged to display - and would feel much more responsibility to take good care of or be respectful of it. It is somehow much harder psychologically to put an artwork in the hall cupboard when you are tired of it. Perhaps because it is not something people buy much of, perhaps because it has a certain aura or mystique... Also people have to consider a lot more immovable factors with art work than jewelery. For example the colours of walls in your house, the opinion of housemates or spouses, the size of the work in a certain space... it is all quite complicated. You can buy a pair of earrings knowing it will go with that particular outfit and you can wear them one a month or everyday - that's just what you do - they are supposed to be interchangeable and flexible. And if you decide you hate them you can chuck them out or give them away. It is much harder to do that with art work. So people are naturally cautious about making a purchase, even if it costs the same amount or less than other more wearable items at the market.

But when people do buy they are usually pretty sure they love it so I know it is going to a good home.

Other stuff I'm thinking about

2008-03-20T17:20:00.000-07:00

Rants, themes, brainstorming:
- the meaning of life
- Stones
- Depression
- Post Traumatic Shock/Stress

Artists and Shows
- Jenny Mitchell
- Rosalie Gascoigne
- Bangkok Thesis Show

Paintings So Far...

2008-03-09T00:24:00.001-08:00

These are some of the paintings I have done so far. Some of these will be in the show coming up in May... and some wont as they have already found good homes. There is still more work in progress that will emerge from the studio in time for the show as well!

They are all painted using oil paint, and many of them are on fine quality linen. I tend to stretch my own canvasses as I enjoy the process and find it helps me to connect with the surface so that when it comes time to paint we are not strangers.

It can take between one week to one year to complete a painting. Depending on how stuck I get with it. Some just need to sit half-finished for extended lengths of time before I feel confident to work on it again. Funny how a solid mental block of several weeks or months duration can lift silently in the night and be gone next time you are in the studio.

How did I get started on Elephants of all things?!?!?!

2008-03-02T03:36:00.000-08:00

In 2006 I moved into a studio that was 'open plan'. This one was very open... It was basically a completely open warehouse, that is - I got one wall and my space was separated from other spaces simply by virtue of whatever furniture we happened to have... you know - desks, milk crates, piles of books, armchairs.

It was a great space, very cheap and had quite lovely light. As it was above a Buddhist centre I could imagine a whole lot of really great energy floating up to me from below. However the lack of walls and privacy was affecting my ability to work. I have always been quite sensitive and private about my work, especially when it is unfinished. So I was really struggling in this space.

It didn't help that the man in the space next to me was always there and hummed and sighed a lot when he worked. I spent as much of my energy while there struggling with myself over anxiety and inhibition as I did on thinking about the work... not a great way to be.

I was describing my dilemma to a friend and she asked a very pertinent question which I answered in what I thought was a flippant manner...

she asked: 'Did anything ever happen to you to make you so inhibited about working in front of other people?'

I said: 'Well there was that time when I was colouring in an elephant in a colouring book and got teased...'

she made me explain...

'Well, I guess I was about seven. We had gotten some free colouring books from some fast food place and were back home colouring in. I was going great guns on an elephant picture! I was shading and staying in the lines and taking so much care to get it right. I had soft gradations of tone and colour, a soft flush of pink in the ears... I finished it and was sooooo proud.

I can't remember who it was, maybe one of my brothers, maybe one of the neighbours, but one of them laughed at me and said in the mocking, know-all way that kids use to devastate each other, 'Elephants don't have pink ears!'

I think I contested that and we got into a fight and so Mum came to adjudicate. She said, 'I don't think elephants do have pink ears, maybe you were thinking of rabbits.' (I might point out that real rabbits do not have pink ears any more than real elephants do). At which point i burst into tears and was inconsolable. Mum tried to make it better by saying nice things like, 'You can colour them in any way you want, it is a drawing and you can make them purple if you want to.' It was no use, I hadn't been trying to be creative - I had stayed in the lines and shaded beautifully in the name of perfection - not imagination!!!!'

My friend heard this story and said simply, 'I think you should paint elephants for a while - especially in this open plan studio space - and paint its damned ears pink, paint the whole thing pink!'

And so I did.

And from there I fell in love with them. I fell in love with painting them, I fell in love with what they started to represent and how pertinent the symbolism of them seemed to be for me. (There will be more on that later)

So now within my art practice I have been painting and thinking almost exclusively about elephants for over a year now. In that time I have been having stalls at the artist's markets and have found an abundance of fellow elephant enthusiasts out there.

Welcome

2008-03-02T02:44:00.000-08:00

Hi Everyone,
Welcome to my Blog!

I have decided to keep a blog so I can share my thoughts and feelings as I journey along the winding path called life...

No really! I actually have! But more specifically, and hopefully less tritely, I will be talking about the journey along the hazardous and pot-holed (must be because not enough of our taxes go towards its upkeep) path of the creative life. I will be sharing thoughts and experiences that I have as I work on my art and will post images from the rough and unfinished to the glittering, paparazzi filled extravagance of the opening night.

I have quite exciting plans for the next year or so, and checking the blog can keep you up to date with all the fun and games afoot.

Firstly I have a show coming up in May at fortyfive downstairs (www.fortyfivedownstairs.com)

Then in November, if the gods of grants and scholarships are willing, I will be spending a month in Thailand volunteering in an elephant refuge and nature park. (www.elephantnaturefoundation.org)

This will (hopefully) give me plenty of insight and reference material on my current subject matter - elephants. Following this trip I will plan another bigger and better show in 2009, hopefully again with the beautiful crew at fortyfive downstairs.

So there will be an abundance of things to post blogs about... I hope you enjoy!