17 Tuesday Jul 2018
Posted in photos by other people
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… and wonder at the cruelty of people who abandon dogs.
These are my daughter’s two dogs. She rescued Em (Emmaline Pankhurst) years ago in heavy rain from the busy highway near Stanthorpe. Nicholson Barker was abandoned as a tiny puppy a few weeks ago and a client turned up with him at her workplace.
17 Wednesday Jan 2018
Posted in photos by other people
For my friend Meg who was a warrior for the Franklin
I first met the photos of Peter Dombrovskis as postcards thirty-odd years ago. I used to have a bundle on hand in the days when I still communicated by snail mail. I wonder now whether his splendid closeups of lichen, moss, seaweed and pebbles influenced my own image-capturing once I started to photograph obsessively.
Dombrovskis came to the fore in the Australian consciousness in the 1980s, during the fight to save the Franklin River from damming. His iconic photo Morning Mist, Rock Island Bend, Franklin River was used by the Wilderness Society in a campaign that unseated a Federal government, rewrote relations between state and federal governments, and prevented the construction of the dam. It didn’t hurt that the area was placed on UNESCO’s world heritage list about the same time.
Now, finally, I have seen his photos large scale, in an exhibition at the National Library of Australia, and I am astonished. They are splendidly textured, three-dimensional, and the detail, every last shred of it, is sharp and focused. The composition is stunning: water leading to middle-ground rocks, leading to faint mountains; rounded moss-covered rocks leading to pines, leading to misty mountains; foreground of giant kelp (three quarters of the image) leading to rocks in the sea, leading to a sliver of ocean; orange flowers leading to an eroded mountain top. Then there are the closeups: coils of seaweed; the striped bark of snow gums; the swirls of ice patterns; the bright circles of fruiting lichen; a curl of driftwood and a slab of black rock amongst brightly coloured shells. Perhaps my favourites are the misty monochrome ones: a twisted tree against a background of mist and in front of the pale silhouettes of other trees; reflections of the straight thin lines of reeds in misty water; and more reflections amongst nebulous river boulders.
It would be insulting to post my photos of Dombrovskis’ photos, severely compromised as they are by reflections in the glass, the darkness, an unfamiliar camera, and a lack of skill. So let me direct you here, or suggest you search google images. This seaweed is a taster, snaffled from an NLA article.
As you may guess, Dombrowskis’ statement expresses my own feelings about taking photos.
Read a lively account by Bob Brown to mark the 30th anniversary of the Franklin campaign, including bizarre elements that make it seem, in parts, like a comic opera.
Thank you Annette for sending me this article.
13 Wednesday Sep 2017
Posted in photos, photos by other people
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It’s now six months since I left Warsaw. I’ve been keeping in touch with Jaś and Maja via weekly skyping, when none of us are gallivanting, and via fortnightly postcards. I also score the occasional photo from their busy parents, and a flurry from Auntie F when she visits in July.
They do ballet and judo after school on the days we used to pick them up. They’ve graduated to “big bikes with pedals, Nanny Meg.” They have planted, watered and picked radishes. They can say “r” – red, brown, green, radish – and relish giving me a recital of “r” words. They too have been on an old-fashioned train. Maja has lost none of her expertise at nagging: “the swimming pool AND the fountain … the swimming pool AND the fountain … the swimming pool AND the fountain … the swimming pool AND the fountain … the swimming pool AND the fountain …” She is tireless. I heard her in the background one Skype session.
When Auntie Franki visits for 3 weeks she takes them to preschool, shopping, the zoo, the geology museum and the swimming pool, and has management skills that far exceed ours – although she points out that they have grown up considerably since her last visit in September. It looks as if she invites silly faces, and ice cream obviously maintains its charms.
There are plenty of holidays: back to Grójec Wielki where we holidayed with them last year, and where our grandparental hands were missed; to Serock; and then for two weeks in Texas. They were in Houston for Hurricane Harvey, but they managed to pat a baby alligator with its mouth taped closed; sit in a rocket at the space centre; travel on the Mississippi; visit New Orleans; spend time in the Whitney Plantation Museum. Jaś mined treasures (quartz and amethyst and other shards) from a salted tub of dirt. Maja’s treasure to show me last Skype was a yellow plastic drill, reward for getting up for preschool when she was still jet-lagged.
24 Thursday Aug 2017
Posted in art, birds, photos by other people
You never know what will turn up at the local library. This time it’s migratory birds and migratory prints.
The presenter is the shorebird recovery expert from National Parks, Narooma. She keeps an eye on migratory bird numbers and safety in the estuaries and on the beaches from Bateman Bay to Eden. She begins by introducing us to E7, a totally inadequate name for a bar-tailed godwit who has been tracked flying non-stop over the ocean from Alaska to New Zealand, an incredible 11500 km in 8 days. And here she is.
We learn more about the The East-Asian Australasian Flyway which extends from Arctic Russia and North America to New Zealand and includes Mongolia, China, North Korea, South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, India, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Indonesia, Timor, Papua New Guinea, and Australia, so many places for habitat to go awry. Each year 50 million migratory waterbirds use the flyway. We meet other birds that arrive on our local shores and estuaries. We see the beach box which is used to educate people about shorebirds and their sometimes non-too-canny nesting habits.
Then we move into the world of art. Kate Gorringe-Smith starts from a premise: Knowledge bestows ownership; uniqueness bestows value. She invites twenty print makers along the flyway to create prints featuring birds and their migration in some way. They do so, using a wide variety of techniques, sometimes with the signature of their culture, sometimes not.
(If you want to see these images individually, with artist name and print technique look here.)
But that’s not the end of the story. Each original print is folded and addressed to an artist or scientist in one of the countries along the flyway and sent off by normal mail, and then sent back. The exhibition includes these letters, marked by their travels with postmarks, and stamps, mimicking the passage and collateral damage that happens to birds, although none of the letters go missing.
And so to this exhibition in the three libraries of the Eurobodalla Shire, its first airing in NSW.
If you’re as intrigued by this project as I am you might like to explore it further, and also take a look at the overwintering project and its rationale.
17 Thursday Aug 2017
Posted in photos by other people
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The moon and sun are travelers through eternity. Even the years wander on. Whether drifting through life on a boat or climbing toward old age leading a horse, each day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.
– from Oku no Hosomichi (The Narrow Road to the Deep North), Matsuo Basho – translation on Goodreads
This quotation begins Suzanne’s “On the road” post “Travelling with the moon.” As I read the post my mind starts spinning out memories and suddenly it seems that the full moon was a participant at many important moments in my life. For these brief moments I join the moon as it travels through its eternity and I journey through my mortality.
NB None of the photos are mine, unfortunately. Night photography skills continue to evade me. Thank you to more skilled photographers and Google image.
If you want a musical accompaniment, try this
26 Monday Jun 2017
Posted in art, in memoriam, photos, photos by other people
Tracey Moffatt is an Australian photographer, our entry in the Venice Biennale, and only incidentally an Aboriginal woman, although a lot of her art is very much about the Aboriginal experience.
I return to Bega Regional Art Gallery to see an exhibition of her work. I begin with “Doomed” (2007), a video collage and the genesis of my unsettling. It is ten minutes of disaster – tidal waves, fire, collapsing buildings and general mayhem – all footage from movies. This is not my usual visual diet. My response is to giggle uncomfortably at many of the sequences, I hope the ones the verbiage designated “trashy”.
“Something more” (1989), a sequence of nine photographs, both cibachrome (colour) and silver gelatine (black and white), does nothing to settle me. This is a narrative sequence, and could also be called “Doomed”. It’s the story of a young Aboriginal woman who moves hopefully beyond her life in an outback hut, only to be murdered and left by the road.
“Some lads”, an early work, provides a brief moment of relief. Here the photographer captures the energy of dancers in the Aboriginal and Islanders Dance Company.
The relief doesn’t last long. The series of tone gravure prints called “Laudanum” (1998) contain horror subdued by technique, but there’s still a sense of doom in the architectural contortions and the ghost-like figures. The photos were taken in Elizabeth Bay House and a Georgian farmhouse north of Sydney, and were produced by Mapplethorpe’s printer by techniques unavailable in Australia. I’m learning a bit about the collaborative nature of photography., and about a photography nothing like my snaps of sunny beaches.
Photos from the series “Scarred for life” (1990s), captioned very matter-of-factly, depicts incidents from childhood which will never be forgotten.
The final video “Nice coloured girls” (1987) shows colonialism stood on its head as Aboriginal girls cruise Kings Cross looking for a drunk bloke to roll, with juxtaposed extractcs from early colonial journals about the exploitation of Aborginal girls. Or is it the ongoing outcome of colonial brutalities?
A lot of Moffatt’s photographs are staged costume pieces. The children’s room in the gallery has a collection of props and costumes, a mirror, paints and a camera and encourages children to emulate Moffatt’s modus operandi, if not her dark themes.
If you’d like to see Tracey Moffatt’s entry called “My horizons” in the Venice Biennale, you can find some images here, and a Guardian review here.
Disclaimer: I had no idea that this exhibition would give my readers cause to say yet again: “Not for me Meg.”
03 Saturday Jun 2017
Posted in Melbourne, opera, photos by other people
On my last night in Melbourne I have a ticket to see the last performance of “Carmen” by the Australian Opera at the State Theatre. There are banners and hoardings all over town advertising it. I’m drawn to it in the first place because the Shakespearean actor and director, John Bell, is directing it, his second foray into opera. I last saw him as Shylock in a theatre-in-the-round performance of “The merchant of Venice” at the Canberra aquarium in the early 1990s.
I dine beside the river – baked fish is tough, and meringue on dessert burnt. Not an auspicious beginning to the evening. I arrive early and find my door. As I look around I notice something familiar – a few of the Shoalhaven paintings of Arthur Boyd panelling the wall. I say to the usher “Are they originals?” They are. “They’re worth millions of dollars, and no one even notices them. And look. There’s a woman leaning on one.” She calls her boss who goes and charms the woman into apology. When I check the next morning I discover that there are not only fourteen Boyds, but a number of John Olsens and Roger Kemps at other entry points to the theatre. (The links don’t show the actual paintings in the theatre: it’s almost impossible to track down information about them.)
Then the doors open and I find myself looking down and down and down into the plush redness of the theatre. I clutch the wall as I descend steeply to my seat in the front row of the balcony, with a solid rail protruding in front of it to prevent me tipping myself into the auditorium in my enthusiasm for the performance. I’m at the side, but I have an excellent view of the stage and of the orchestra. The theatre fills, and the noises of anticipation increase: chatter and the tuning of instruments.
The curtain lifts on a scene I recognise from Sue’s photos of Havana: Bell has set his “Carmen” amongst the gangsters and military police of Cuba. I’m not sure my seat offers the best acoustics, but it gives me plenty of room and a good view as the story unfolds: Carmen playing her charms for all they’re worth and sensing her doom; Don José lovesick and savage; Micaëla demure and determined; Escamillo arrogant and self-obsessed. The chorus of boys is charming, one lad in particular tumbling and playing to the audience with delicious self-confidence.
The highlight for me, perversely, is a flute solo in the overture to the second half, but I also love the energy of the dancing; the shiny purple garb of the chief gangster; Don José’s battle between love and duty; and Carmen’s uncompromising desire for freedom.
Photos are snaffled with thanks from https://simonparrismaninchair.com/2017/05/05/opera-australia-carmen-review-melbourne-2017/
The singers are Rinat Shaham as Carmen; Dmytro Popov as Don José; Shane Lowrencev as Escamillo; and Stacey Alleaume as Micaëla.
30 Tuesday May 2017
Posted in Australian Ballet, Melbourne, photos by other people
Who would suspect, looking at this industrial building in the industrial area of Altona, that it houses the magicians who make scenery and costumes for the Australian Ballet, and all the rich relics of past performances?
Image from http://concepty.com.au/portfolio/the-australian-ballet-production-centre/
It houses a collection of costumes and sets valued at $40 million, and provides work space for set construction and scene painting. As we enter the office space the first thing I see are costumes for “Snugglepot and Cuddlpie”, Mr Lizard and a gumnut baby’s cap, a classic Australian story we were reading to the twins in Warsaw.
Then an extraordinarily knowledgeable guide leads us into the construction area.
Image from http://concepty.com.au/portfolio/the-australian-ballet-production-centre/
The company is on tour at the moment, so the work area is empty of people. What remains are stacks of sets for innumerable ballets. The guide tells us of the complexities of set design for a touring company. Different sized stages at different venues mean that sets have to be constructed so they can expand or contract to fit. The Sydney Opera House stage is the smallest: he’s quite scathing about this national icon’s inadeqacies for ballet. A production of “Alice’s adventures in Wonderland” is imminent and we walk through stacks of its sets.
We move out of this vast warehouse room, past a neat array of brooms hanging on the wall and a basketball hoop with skid marks on the floor where the artisans relax, into the storage space for costumes. En route we peep in to see a wigmaker at work, crafting an intricate white (arsenic-free) 18th century wig, strand by individual strand, up to two weeks intensive work for one wig.
Wigmaker at work (not the one we saw): image from https://australianballet.com.au/the-artists/artisans/costume-atelier: see here for an interview about wig making
And then we are amongst rack upon rack of costumes, an archive of all the performances of the Australian Ballet since its formation in 1962. Each new performance is designed anew, so costumes are rarely re-used. Our guide lifts tutus from the racks and shakes them right side out, pointing out details created in response to the demands of the costume designer: perhaps “the underneath layer needs to show like this.” We walk up and down rows of silk, brocade, velvet, faux fur, lace, flannel, feathers, tulle and even digital prints in every imaginable colour. We hear stories of designers who require a very specific fabric that takes ages to source, and of delays on delivery when volunteer seamstresses are called in to race against the clock stitching on final lace details. If you think tutus are always delicate tulle, let me disabuse you. We saw one made out of the mesh from air-conditioning ducts sent to an automotive painter to stain it black.
Once I believed ballet costumes were mere impressions. How wrong I was. These are haute couture.
https://australianballet.com.au/the-artists/artisans/costume-atelier
http://www.ausballetstory.com.au/2012/01/1-september/
Stacked against the wall are boxes full of head-dresses: the millinery team creates tiaras, hats, jewellery and shoe buckles, using sparkling crystals and beads and often basing their creations on exhaustive period research.
Image from https://australianballet.com.au/the-artists/artisans/costume-atelier
The tour over, we step out of this enchanted space, where the magic of performance is created, into an ordinary Melbourne day and head back to the Arts Precinct for lunch.
03 Wednesday May 2017
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Here you see fish who have demonstrated unsuspected cognitive and social skills once researchers begin to pay them attention. So what did they do to earn this status?
Cooperative food sourcing:
Short-tail stingrays are usually solitary, but rays at Woollamia not all that far north of home have begun to develop social behaviours and hierarchies. The impetus is competition for refuse from a pipe leading from the fish-cleaning table. Researcher Joni Pini-Fitzsimmons has been observing this change, and naming the rays she observes, because they have “personality.”
Recognition of their own image:
This is a rarity beyond humans, but manta rays do it.
Sharing skills and knowledge:
Calum Brown is a seasoned researcher in fish cognition. He’s documented rainbow fish: they recognise each other; prefer to shoal with fish they know; have clear social hierarchies; and not only figure out how to evade traps but teach evasion tactics to shoalmates. On top of this, they associate a signal with food twice as fast as rats do.
Food access skills:
Wrasse and tusk fish behave with the same skill as crows: they strike shellfish against rocks to open them. Aquaculture cod have figured out that they can trigger a feeding device using the tags on their fins.
Developing a business and maintaining customer relations:
Then there’s my favourite, the Great Barrier Reef cleaner wrasse. It’s entrepreneurial, setting up cleaning stations where other fish stop to have dead skin and parasites removed and it remembers and recognises each client. Sometimes it’s tempted and steals a bit of flesh, and has been noticed chasing the victim to try and mollify it by rubbing its back with pelvic fins. It can obviously attribute mental states to others, something plenty of humans have trouble with.
If you want to find out more about cleaner wrasse, have a look at
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2015/08/19/4295627.htm
I suppose my jackdaw mind picked up the mention of a stingray in an article by James Bradley in the April 2017 issue of the Monthly because I’d just encountered one as I walked along Narooma Boardwalk. I’d read the article before, without any particular interest, but now I combed it intently because I knew one creature he was writing about. The title of the article is misleading “Fish have feelings too”, understates the case.
20 Thursday Apr 2017
Posted in photos by other people
In a fit of idleness, I find myself flicking through the arts section of Australian ABC iView, amongst a series of short documentaries about artists who paint outside and big. I’ve always been intrigued by murals and their scale. My first encounter with a mural was a trompe d’oeil window on the living room wall of an artist friend who’d just liberated herself from an obnoxious and controlling husband. More recently, I’ve been relishing the street art icelandpenny uncovers and keeps uncovering in Canada.
So I am ready for the artists featured in the segments of ArtBites called “The wanderers.” There I meet a number of young Australian artists who ramble around the world painting on walls and other large public surfaces, and bonding with communities. My favourites all paint in Australian country towns, familiar landscapes to me, where they talk to the locals to get a feel for place and story.
Guido Van Helten has left his mark in many countries. In Manildra in central western NSW, population about 500, his chosen canvas is the side of freight trains carrying flour from the biggest flour mill in the southern hemisphere. He chooses local faces, photographs them and then reduces them to eyes, because “whole faces aren’t the right shape for a railway carriage”. He attracts an audience as he works, locals intrigued by seeing people they know emerge from the steel.
Nowra is one of the destinations of the train: it’s also the station where I change from bus to train when I travel to Sydney, so who knows? If I miss out there, he has also painted in my daughter’s work-town of Stanthorpe. When I visit in the middle of the year, I’ll definitely be able to see one of his pieces in person.
(Photos from Google images)
Georgia Hill is an unlikely mural artist at first sight. Her art is precise, black and white, and features lettering. She goes to Tarraleah, a small isolated hydro electricity town in Tasmania, expecting to be drawn to the Art Deco buildings and other structures but instead finds herself attracted to the stories of people. Her painting has to be done in a hurry to beat the weather, and she paints for two days from 8am to 1am.
(The photo is a screen dump from the documentary.)
Amok Island travels to the Heron Island research facility on the Great Barrier Reef and nearby Yeppoon for his segment of “The wanderers”, exploring underwater for his images. He works very precisely, designing on the computer and aiming for realism abstracted, mathematics with heart. He’s a keen underwater photographer and says that tracking down a hard-to-find underwater creature satisfies him in the same way that placing his graffiti in a spot that was really hard to reach did when he was a graffiti artist. His Barrier Reef images he paints on walls, but the link takes you to banksias on silos and other images he has left all over the world on a variety of surfaces.
(Photos are screen dumps from the documentary)
The other artists featured in The Wanderers series are Elliott Routledge, DabsMyla, and Rone.
