feeling poutie!

I came into my work room this morning and saw that no one had read my blog. I was poutie - its odd but its true - I had expected audience and there wasnt!

Ive been thinking about this reaction. in a way I feel very Victorian - the 'gentle reader' kind of thing. But when I think about it - and its difficult to articulate - I create my own sense of audience in my own head and so this 'audience' exists on several planes


1. my imaginary day dream of audience
2. my own reaction to my work and my thoughts
3. comments left here by other people

so 3. is only a part of my construct of audience.

To change the subject Ive started reading Robert Graves' The White Goddess and the catalogue of the Travelling Eqyptian Exhibition organised by the AFA in 2001.
Something that caught my eye - private statues often copied the statues of the reigning king but that his statues were not lifelike but used symbolic features to make him godlike in his image.

In a weird way it reminded me of having my photograph taken with an actor portraying an actor portraying a fictional charcter at movie world.

I love it!!!!

I love new books!

I bought the copy of Egyptian art Ive been looking at for some time. In reality its a catalogue of the work held in the British museum but its lush and beautiful and I wanted it!

I also bought a copy of Graves' The white Goddess because it talks to the work Im making at the moment. And I found Rappaport's Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity.

Then in a fit of the greedies I bought Tomasz Stanko's CD selected recordings.

So now I'm drinking a glass of very ordinary champagne with a flower floating in it and playing here. Im loving this!

I went and found a song by Anthony and the Johnsons to play here and found one.
I love his work with a passion - it makes an ache in the middle of me and allows me to experience psychic pain without destruction - for this I give thanks.

I'm going to upload more of my work and my artists statement

 

 

Artist Statement

I am a collage artist. I explore the concept of the sign using the idea of the female and found materials.

The common need to find the human form intrigues me. Irrespective of the disparate nature of the materials available we have a desire to construct the human form. In my work I wish to push this thought: how abstract must the form become before we no longer find the human within it?

Landscape fascinates me; the sensual relationship between land and sky; horizon as form seeking line; both speak to the mythic structures of earth mother and sky father.
Two pathways beckon; the pieta and the landscape as female.

I am not sure if the females I create are icons or if they are fetishes.

mining past posts

its was almost warm, the sky a blue with promise and the trees were covered with the faintest trace of green.

I wanted it to be an haiku - and I hope that it will be.

the haiku I caught was a much darker butterfly.

thank you to haiku thief for raising the idea of alternate realities

******phone, cock both hands full
talk, love, of a distant world
don't wake the sleeper

Unpacking the old blog

Im going through my old myspace blog and transcribing entrues here because i want to keep this blog and keep it finctional. 

So Im reading old posts, old observations and old poems and loving the fragments of eloquence I find in my work. Such a narcissist I am but there it is.

There is great pleasure in reading through old thoughts, great panic at seeing old difficulties still unresolved but delight in the patterning of a self given back to itself!

The delight of language!

I've just got back from a walk down to the local vet. My cat, Boomps brought in another possum baby last night to play with and so I took it to the vet to be sent to the wildlife recovery place.

This bites hard as a New Zealander! In New Zealand possums are vermin and great efforts are taken to remove them from the bush environment they are destroying. Here they are precious little things to be saved and nurtured - as I said it bites hard!

Anyway, Boomps has a habit of bringing in babies to play with. Big ones he kills and devours - he's a cat, its nature and whilst I don't particularly like cleaning up after him I appreciate the ones he leaves unpacked beside my bed as a late night snack - THAT is an expression of love!

I saw a house on the way there that looked uninhabited and was eagerly determined to check it out on my way back. However, on my return the gate was closed and fastened so I expect it has inhabitants of the legitimate kind.

Typing that makes me wonder about the concept of legitimate occupation and just exactly what makes some occupations illegitimate - but that's another blog!

Another aside, the first house I went and photographed now has had its lawns mowed and a temporary fence erected around the pool. it seems the caretaker who wrote the note to the squatter  has arrived. I went in to say hello but the house was as open and deserted as before. Robert and I are going down on Thursday to retrieve some rose bushes and azaleas before such retrieval work becomes impossible and the whole garden is bulldozed away.

And now to the point of this blog!

I'm fascinated by the English language, the preciseness and magpie qualities of a language which has historically taken and used words from everywhere in the quest for that degree of precision.

I often think about the subtle differences in words when I'm walking  - picture images that illustrate them and strive to delineate exact differences between words that seem very similar.

Three of my favorites are glint, glimmer and glisten. I can spend a whole hour's walking thinking about how different these three words are in their essence and I can do it over and over without becoming bored of it!!

Today I also thought of two more that intrigue me - the differences between lucky and fortuitous. Not words that look or sound similar but curious making nevertheless!!

work for next year - but not NYRs

here are three things I want to concentrate on next year.
Firstly I want to finish my phd. I have 20K words left to write and they are mainly the theoretical links between the ethnographic section.


I want to have another exhibition later in the year. The work I am developing is an extension of the  fetishes I started last year but  want to develop the narrative aspects of the work.
and I'm looking forward to presenting a garment at the wearable art exhibition lee is starting

http://www.manneqart.com/

I'm going to add a gallery for my collages and books

I'm beginning to feel I can do these things!!

•  
• )

thinking about bodies

I don't believe it is possible to be female in this modern western urban world we live in and not have a skewed vision of your own body - your own presence in the world.

Since the female body  became part of the sign system by which an androcentric culture tries to construct meaning in the world our bodies have been up for grabs!

The curve of our stomachs,  the curve of our ankles and feet, the curve where our backs meet our buttocks all have added, and often social, meaning.

I watch music videos - I always have. I have always enjoyed the window into popular culture they provide with their visual imagery and - I like music!

But I am not  enjoying the music videos so very much now. The portrayal of my sex as prostitutes and sex slaves suggests to me the sign system our bodies is reiterating  that something has gone terribly wrong in our culture.

Im curious also that a cut face is becoming normative. the reshaping  of the female face has become something women are supposed to accept as normal and to aspire to.

Some cosmetic surgeons work is so particular it can be visibly recognised.
On a symbolic level post modern culture has become an angry/sad adolescent cutting herself to create some kind of feeling, some kind of sensation - not understanding that what she feels is as unreal as everything she sees.

medea and hecuba

I am very fond of Greek tragedy and i think Medea and Hecuba are my favourite characters. Although I also admire Clytemnestra as well and wonder what i would do if my husband had murdered our daughter and brought home his slave girl lover. Full of his own importance in a sorry sorry matter would it not be easy to try to cut out his defective heart.

I love also that the Furies didn't blame her!!

Medea is an extraordinary character as well. She knew her way through the labyrinth that imprisoned her brother and exchanged this knowledge to become Jason's wife and to bear his children.

When he broke that contract she fed his seed back to him.
its an interesting thought, would the sons she bore him have become her advocates or would they have sided with their successful and dynamic father. I wonder.

Hecuba, once Queen of troy sitting waiting for the morning, knowing her fate and the fate of all the women with her. having watched the rape of her daughters and the death  of her grandson.
I love that play and sit through that night with her on a regular basis!

A most disjoint blog I'm sorry - but its a work in progress

who wants to start reading these texts with me!!

trouble in the garden

I woke up this morning to magpies. I love magpies, they seem such courageous, clever creatures and I love their songs. 

One of my most tender memories of my twenties is mending a broken heart with champagne and my favourite music in the bath. 

As I drank and sobbed  my way though the bottle singing  my heart out  I was suddenly stopped by the glorious sight of the end of the sunset  through the bathroom window and the sound of magpies. 

It was a green sunset, one of those rare and elusive beauties and it seemed to me the magpies took  both that beauty and my own pain and amplified them  to a place where all I could do was watch and listen. No place any more for the tedium of a passed lover!!

And I have loved the song of magpies forever since.

I went out this morning to introduce myself to the singers and to offer food. The thinly sliced chicken breast that was  to  be  marinated for dinner tonight was quickly  diced and taken outside. I love the way they so quickly learn to catch what is thrown and eat it on the wing.

The ducks were a little perturbed by the magpies and watched from the safety of the other side of their house - until they saw me throwing food when they immediately waddled over to investigate.

The magpies watched me intently with their beautiful eyes and sang me a song of such fierce beauty it calmed my sullen heart.

Boomps came out to find me, as he always does and was overwhelmed by the sight of the magpies sitting so calmly on the steps below me. He launched himself in a  bundle of fierce joy and lust at them.  They simply lifted upwards in a song of derision and ridicule.

Boomps was so distressed by this he ran as fast as he could and hid in the jacaranda  in the courtyard.

When he saw me with the camera he turned his head away!

I love today!!

camberwell market

camberwell market is my local flea market - its truly amazing and part of my weekly  ritual. rain or shine I'm there fossiking for treasure ... or components.

I have a set routine. Arrive early, park my car in my regular car park - if i get there early its always available. Through the main gate, pay over dollar coin and head to the coffee shop.

I walk the same route as well and say 'good morning' to the traders I know.

Often I'm looking for fabric - or rather clothes that can be deconstructed ((ripped up)).
I have a colour palette in my mind and I just wander and collect what seems to fit. i love that when I do that and get home with whats stuffed in my bag the colours are perfect for the project I am working on!!

I went through a stage of collecting cassette tapes. they were on average between 20c and 50c each so I collected all the music I didnt have on CD - old music I only liked a little and music I had never heard of.  MY cassette collection now fills 2 large  cupboards in the kitchen, is over 1000 cassettes and provides my 'work in the kitchen' music - or it did until the miraculous advent of ipod!

There's the fur man who is selling off the contents of his father's furrier business - all small delicate skins and curious surfaces; Elizabet the haberdasher, who now has her bone buttons made in Tibet.

the man who used to sell CDs and cassettes now sells picture tiles and I remind myself weekly to talk to him of the boxes under the house full of unused tiles from 30 years ago.

Leo the jeweler, the man who sold me a car load of antique kimono for $50, Susan who sold the most comfortable pants in the world!

its a wonderful place!

Sometimes i feel my walk through all of this is akin to meditation!

and just like that .... a thought

I was just thinking of god and mother gods and the whole parthenon of these entities.
Its always seemed curious to me that god has the appearance of an elderly, sometimes friendly, often cantankerous grandfather type.

Such a patriarchal image must relate to what we both want and fear from our fathers. perhaps, in a culture which denies many men avenues for the gentle expression of love, a loving father is a dream and wish rather than an everyday experience. ((I apologise to those of you who are loving fathers but this is not about the particular))

Perhaps in the matriarchal culture which created the  mother goddess - things were similar but different. perhaps the image of a loving and nurturing mother was the dream in the presence of strong and powerful women.

perhaps matriarchal rule is similar to patriarchal to most subjects - a ruler is a ruler is a ruler.

We posit a very real difference because we want there to be one

the war in the garden

The magpies are settling in now! they arrive at promptly  7am sitting  on the garden chairs in the courtyard and shouting  loudly for breakfast. i take the little mince meat balls from the fridge and the seeds for the doves and the ducks and wander outside whilst the water is boiling for my coffee.

Boomps comes with me wandering innocently around my feet and watching, watching and brooding.

This morning, overwhelmed by feline longing he dived at one of the magpies who shouted at him and lazily lifted up onto the clothesline. Boomps pretended it was the mince he wanted and stalked back into the house. I found him later curled up on my bed beside my Teddy - proving for all time Teddies are universal comfort!!

The ducks have decided that since the magpies eat in the courtyard they will as well - they have also decided they like the little minced meat balls and so waddle up hurling obscenities at the magpies and try to scarf as much of the mince as they can.

the magpies ignore them as they do all creatures that cant fly or feed them!!

The only creatures unaffected by all this are Frank the elderly lilac point, whom we suspect has Alzheimer's and is often unaffected by anything we can see but will stand crying and lost in the hallway until we find and cuddle him and the doves who live in the tree above the duck house and sing irrespective of what is going on.

I stood next to one of the magpies yesterday afternoon and looked it in the eye - it looked straight back at me clear eyed and unafraid and I almost put my hand out for it to walk up - I wonder if it would have!

My mother's pubic hair

I went out to dinner with friends on saturday evening and the conversation turned - as it does - to sexual obsessions and fetishes. In particular a man recently arrested for collecting pubic hair from the travel luggage of women flying business or first class. An interesting fetish!

'I had one of my mother's pubic hairs for a long time.' I entered the conversation casually, I thought.But no!

This disclosure of mine required explaining.

When my mother died my sisters and I spent the afternoon sitting on her bed and clearing through her personal possessions. it was an interesting experience, things she had collected and hoarded that made no sense to us. I have a champagne cork dated and kept - marked with several exclamation marks and nothing else. A gold dip pen nib, heavily engraved but also anonymous.

In many ways I love that she kept things but felt no need to elaborate - proof that she kept them for herself only, I believe and love about her!

She had a very small collection of antique silk french knickers and I took these. I remember her buying each pair and her delight in such sensual, delicious under garments in an age when most people wore sensible cotton. These were sheer and draped, without seams or labels!

When I returned home I took them up to my bedroom. It was my intention to have them folded and tucked into my knicker drawer - a tiny reminder I would see each morning and so I sat on my bed to fold them.

It was at this time I found my mother's pubic hair caught in the silk mesh of cream fabric and for some reason I removed it and looked at it.

I remember that moment clearly. I was looking at a most intimate visual of my dead mother and I cried cried at my loss, her beauty and charm and her delight in her french knickers! I put the hair carefully in the locket she had given me and revisited it from time to time.

It stayed there for a long time - until my toddler daughter began exploring my things and pulled out all my jewelry to play with. The hair disappeared  - gone forever and I said goodbye to it in tears on my bed  - it was my last link with my dead mother!!