"matchbox songs and gypsy hymns"...'studio distraction'...

free associations on the studio wall...how things change within the confines of a gallery space...i feel there are so many recent things that need go no further than the studio wall...a momentary distraction...more on other/self portraits tomorrow...sp

"matchbox songs....other/self-portraits"

I don't spend too much time with things once they are completed...usually happy to hide them away somewhere for days...then coming back to them to see if they surprise ...hopefully to the degree that i almost don't recall them...as if they belonged to someone else...then i know they were worth doing...i feel that way about these..for now at least...as i explained last night there was a certain intensity to the making of this series that is inevitably contained in the work...something memorial in their presence...they commenced as a random collection of anonymous photographic portraits of men...it just happened that way...and suddenly i reached a point where i couldn't ignore them...something had to be made of them...the fact that they were male figures from my fathers generation is something...but not deliberate...no doubt some Freudian strata...what i remember most intently... is the fragments of the black and white photographs..the depth of the bible blacks...the surface of the ivory whites...evoking memory... 'de facto' by nature...even the piano keys...found in an op-shop in Hobart...i can claim very little...except for the last three pieces that are from photos of my father...killed in a car accident when i was 3 months old...with their piano key handles i hold them up to the light...but nothing comes through...sp  

"match-box songs....other/self portraits"

Perhaps a little late night phenomenology...its been awhile..i want to begin where all phenomenology begins...with descriptions...etchings,fragments of black and white photographs,aluminium cut-outs,alphabet stencils, shoe tacks and piano keys...collage/assemblage...each of these have a title beginning with the word 'self'...self at the window 1934...self at the beach house 1935...self at the blue mountains 1937...self with  bicycle 1937...self with kittens 1935...self outside church 1936...self on the pier 1937...and so on...the descriptions were taken from a 1930's photo album that i purchased from a second hand shop...something in the way the awkward white hand written text on the blue-grey page seem to reveal as much if not more than the photographs themselves...but also something  deeper... a sense..something that arrived within nothing more than an instant which suggested that this anonymous 'self' was in fact myself...and i do not mean in any historically connected form...of all human kind present and past inescapably tied to the historical flow of time... a moment of entwinement with subject and object...merleau-ponty's "flesh" of the world...perhaps...i can't really say...but it was something strong enough to make me want to make these works...and once again within the confines of the studio things like shoe tacks, bitumen and piano keys commenced their conversations...there was a level of intent in the making of these pieces that resonates with merleau-ponty's insights into notions of self and other...he spoke of the interrogation of identity...and making these had a certain continuity of experience that allows for meaning and identity to unfold within process and intuition...i will write more detailed descriptions tomorrow evening... i  leave you with this from m-p...a poetic riddle..."i borrow myself from others, i create others from my own thoughts"...sp   

"matchbox songs & gypsy hymns"....'self-portraits i-xii'

"matchbox Songs + gypsy hymns"...'self-portraits' i-xii ' etching,collage and piano keys...2010

"matchbox songs"...existential umbrella...last evening views

I have had to carry an umbrella for the last two mornings here in Brisbane...unfortunately I did not have reason to make full use of it...only at street corners for pressing the walk button or in the elevator at qca for pressing the floor numbers...I seem to prefer it that way..I have never felt the need to record it open and exposed...closed and bound it remains some creature enclosed in its own existence...but the boy- child in me has recurring thoughts of transforming it into a secret weapon...my childhood was such that air guns, knives,hand made bows and arrows and any other creative weapon device my brothers and I could manufacture...were all simply there...not always under adult supervision...in fact very rarely...black and white cowboy movies and war films reinforced our infatuation for such things...007..."The Avengers" "The Saint" and "The Man from U.N.C.L.E"...all played their part as well...this is the last of the umbrellas..perhaps...the umbrella I have been carrying for the past two mornings is not the original one that I purchased from the cheap import shop in Fortitude Valley when I first arrived in Brisbane...this newer one has a certain sophistication about it that I'm not certain is quite me...but I have thoughts of a new series...I had intended to write of Merleau-Ponty and his notions of "flesh"...the degree of reciprocating entwinement of experience between ourselves and objects ...perhaps in a fashion I have...sp

"matchbox songs & gypsy hymns"...accomplished meanings

I have never felt totally comfortable with the idea of meaning being found as if it were something stable and able to be contained...the introduction to meaning relies upon the undertaking of a particular process that allows for the individuals sediments of experience to be shown...the umbrella etchings allowed for such a process...and in a sense I have moved beyond what ever meaning was made available at that time...but there is also something that continues to resonate within me...perhaps it exists within the spontaneity of their making...never really allowing the time to get to know one another...nothing more than an introduction...but that is all one needs at times...an introduction that leaves an impressionable stain...Merleau-Ponty spoke of meaning as a process of accomplishments...which sounds quite obvious and simplistic..but for me something resonates within that one word 'accomplish' that seems to infer giving things time and place to allow meaning to unfold...but there is ever only a single window of recognition...the umbrella series are etching, collage and at times assemblage...some of the papers I have printed the etched image onto  are quite archival unsound...some have been coated with shellac or matt varnish...pieced together with masking tape, wax thread stitching and pva glue...each of these elements relate a sediment of meaning...then there is the text...but I regard it in the same light as image...its meaning is no longer fixed to language...it remains in the realms of the visual...and now the night sky over brisbane is raining...on the day of the 'zombie walk' outside my window the walking dead are running for shelter.sp

'matchbox songs & gypsy hymns"...'existential umbrella'

I have often compared the placing of a completed work of mine in an art prize to tearing the pages from a book...that single page devoid of the previous or the one to follow often has little meaning...or at least its complete meaning can often never be made evident...the umbrella series as they are presented here are pages torn from a book...a suggested narrative... but text and image remain unrelated...at best distant cousins...i often think of what would be the musical equivalent of some of the things i make...in these the umbrella is a certain voice..at times words and sounds both spoken and sung...a cry..then a breath...a choir without a conductor...the text is constant...almost monotonous...the alterations in their blackness suddenly heavier single notes...an instrument that is familiar but is hidden from view... slightly out of tune...so one is never quite certain...the elements of collage paper..slithers of a particular sound...muted and transparent...in some of them there are sirens and crows calling...the silences of a figure curled up in a brunswick street alcove at 6am...or the eyes of a sex worker in the doorway of the laundromat..austere gallery windows.. soup kitchen gatherings...the new ones always at a distance...train journeys from the valley to southbank...diary pages...and the poetry of Lorca...but perhaps i'm reading too much into things...sp

"match-book text'

I'm not certain I have anything more to write about these works...no sense in explaining things away.sp

"matchbox songs & gypsy hymns"...biography

'Biography'...I have hesitated before writing about these works...perhaps at 3am my thoughts are still surfacing...or perhaps there is little to say about them...the umbrella image was of course one of the very first etchings i made after arriving here in brisbane...the first umbrella i had owned...at one stage i had titled it

 "the existential umbrella"...and on its own it remains that...but it soon formed a relationship with a series of spangled drongoes...which some people still mistake for crows...and so the umbrella found its own place...it was really the thing that brought me to Merleau-Ponty...i will write more of its connection to my research but what interests me is the relationship which exists between image and text...in particular hand written text...i would have preferred to have presented my mva thesis written in long hand...just like these pages...it is the closest thing, the most direct moment of thought and language meeting...mistakes included...i don't recall how these variations of the umbrella etching made their way into the pages of my research journal...it remains as collage...and collage comes with its own self-contained meanings..sp

'personages 3'...ambiguity & identity

The last of the personage series... a thin white muslin curtain placed in front of the window...a collection of figures & objects... works in progress...the veil...the ambiguity of the everyday...only ever a vague recognition of our experience of objects...disparate gatherings...the presence & absences of all that we encounter...sp

"matchbox songs & gypsy hymns"...'personages 3'...

"matchbox songs &gypsy hymns"...'personages 3'

...the first change over since my return from a tour of workshops in NZ...a truly memorable experience...'personages 3' is quite spontaneous...one of those things one has to simply do to arrive at a point of deciding to either develop or discard...once again the narrow space makes documentation difficult but the smokey effect of the photos are from the thin curtain of muslin that has been placed behind the glass window frame...why?..I will write more tomorrow evening but for now its existence seems to mirror phenomenology's embracing of our experience of vagueness...and as the message to myself on the studio wall reads....'proceed with vagueness'..sp