Winter like a MOFO

If you check in here with any regularity you might remember earlier this year I participated in the incredible MONAFOMA (or MOFO) festival (that we are so lucky to have here) for the first time as a part of the No Mates Ensemble. It had been a long time since I had done any live performance and that was a real hoot, so when I was invited to take part in the third incarnation of Sound to Light, a kind of blind-date collaboration project, I thought I’d like to try doing something live again and this time I wanted to do some spoken word. After making that bold decision, the stakes for this rose somewhat with the announcement that THIS Sound to Light would be staged as a part of the considerably more high-profile DARK MOFO, the inaugural dark twin to our usual Summer event. So eep. A slightly bigger step than I was ready for but I’m diving in.

My blind date is musician, composer and electro-savant Rod Berry and with us both dreading the coming Winter it seemed our meetings were full of sniffles, common cold remedies, soup recipes and whatnot. As a result what has developed is a performed incantation of protection against the coming big freeze, collaged and extracted from siginfiers of warmth and comfort: soups, knitting patterns, Beach Boys songs.

I’ve been working on a system that will randomise my cut-up text and feed it back to me like an autocue. First I designed an app, but it turned out I was not able to actually install it without paying an annual developers fee to Apple. $99US per annum. As someone with little to no interest in developing apps for distribution, my response was: sod that and BOOOOOOOO.

But I’m liking the perfomance aesthetic of the phone which is considerably different to, and I think perhaps a little more ‘present’ than, laptop performance so I’m sticking with it and have translated my app instead into a phone-scaled website. I’m getting really interested now in the idea of developing my own  ‘performance tools’ (something musos have done for a long time) and have designed it so it will cast a warm glow over my face as I recite the generated incantation. This gif here is kind of a mockup of an early draft design and it’s ended up not too dissimilar.

In the meantime Rod’s having fun with Fair Isle and I’m getting really excited as we start to pull it all together. The event will happen @ Salamanca Arts Centre (Hobart) and Fed Sqare (Melbourne) with a bit of the old web simulcast between the two locations , Saturday June 15, 6pm.

Maybe see you there? MOFOs?

Un grand nombre de Sœurs

Here follows my artists statement for an upcoming show, The French Connection, opening in Richmond, Virginia (that’s right – the one in the USA) on February 24.  It’s not the most succinct artists statement I have ever written but thinking about my time in France unleashes something of a torrent, it probably reflects that.

“The primary purpose of my arrival in Paris seven and a half years ago was to collaborate with Canadian filmmaker and fellow lapsed Catholic, Toni-Lynn Frederick.  We had met and become fast friends in Vancouver, Canada 4 years earlier.  TL was working on a PhD in the UK at the time and it we managed to orchestrate this meeting, somewhere between our two homes (I live in Tasmania, Australia) quite successfully.

She joined me in Paris and we travelled together to Lourdes (in it’s off season), shot black and white reversal super-8 film, ate at the same mixed-asian restaurant every night, drank, argued about the Catholic church and discussed our experiences growing up within it and tried to record as much of this as possible. We collected 2 large 4 litre jugs of the famous Lourdes water and carried them with us back to Paris where TL taught me to hand-process reversal movie film in chemistry we mixed up with the water we had transported. The film when processed, turned out to be a divine blue-on-blue rather than black and white, like the blue of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s robe.  TL assured me that this sometimes happened in hand-processing, but I prefer to think of it as our personal Lourdes miracle. We planned to call whatever we made with what we had done,The Pilgrims.

I have tried many times in the years since to turn what we have, the film and recordings, into SOMETHING.  I edited together a short video piece soon after but it left me unsatisfied. I have screened short loops of the film (the crown on the Basilica, the ring of stone lambs just a few hundred metres away) for a couple of exhibitions but nothing seemed an appropriate use of this material.

Even prior to being invited to exhibit here, I had made a resolution for 2012 to resolve this work. This exhibition and it’s collision in timing with a local symposium on socially engaged and relational artworks at which I was speaker, exhibitor and audience suddenly made something clear to me – The Pilgrims WAS the trip.  I couldn’t make the work because we had already made it.

I now plan to create a blog to document The Pilgrims, pulling together letters, diary entries, film, video and photographs to act as coda to the project but this has not yet happened so I offer up instead, two small film stills from the project, that I have, rather unimaginatively. titled Two Nuns and Three Nuns respectively (lets date them 2004 – 12) each blessed by me with some of what remains of the Lourdes water. I kept some in a Mary-shaped bottle. As well as ‘rebirthing’ the images, this kind of treatment/abuse of prints has since become somewhat of a signature for me.

The Pilgrims took up one month of a four month residency and while there were brief visits from my husband, some other family and from Europe based friends, for much of the time I was lonely. I suffer periodically from both agora and social phobias and I was gripped by both while resident at the Cité Internationale des Arts. I also drank very heavily.

The video Encore was shot in my studio over an afternoon and night, as I sang along repeatedly to an aria from  Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers that had continually brought me some comfort while simultaneously breaking my heart, Je Croix Entende Encore.  The first take was performed sober, and subsequent takes performed as I consumed a sequence of martinis. The drunken take used was after about 9, but in actuality I continued to drink until I collapsed and had a little blackout on the  marble floor of my studio. I had hoped that some great truth might be revealed in the comparison.  You know that old furphy that you always tell the truth when you are drunk?  This video suggests it is a lie. While sober me is reserved but open, drunk me is a game-playing showoff. She looks like a liar to me.

I’m glad now that when I met our curator Amie Oliver at the Cité I was sober.  She and another Australian artist, Eugenia Raskopoulos ambushed and commandeered me as a fellow body to storm the Australian embassy and crash an exhibition opening there in protest of the fact that we were not invited. These two women tore me from my solitude and ensured that my last month there was not so lonely, nor wasted. We three linked arms and together crashed more events, drank hot chocolate, walked in the snow and adored Paris together. I will always be grateful for their friendship.

From the distant to the recent, A Pack of Lies is my first artwork made for podcast and incorporates the voices of both our curator, Amie and her partner Harry Kollatz Jnr. (who I was lucky to meet in Paris also) who volunteered as two of the sixteen readers of alternate biographies of my life. Biographies borrowed from film-stars, musicians and sportspeople. It was always important to me that the lies were openly declared as such and so I assembled a selection of readers who knew me personally.  I am not a good liar or a happy one and can only tell lies if I also confess immediately. How very Catholic, I imagine you thinking. Someone told me recently of this work They know it’s not true. I can hear the smiles in their voices. I think I’m happiest when friends give in to my vision and join me in a quest for the ridiculous. This was just such a project.

My time in Paris tore me down and filled me up again and was entirely instrumental to my continuing body of work that has proceeded as an an investigation of identity and the self.  It was a time where I learnt new skills in both craft and diplomacy and was given the opportunity not only to meet with friends and collaborators old and new but to also be truly with myself in a completely messy and exploratory but ultimately constructive way. And all surrounded by the greatest beauty I could ever imagine.

Sally Rees
January 2012″

Below: Me, Eugenia, Amie – @Angelinas for the finest hot chocolate in the known universe. Paris 2004

…and a week later, my Touchy Feely wrap-up.

So… where were we?

I was off to the Debate/Panel Discussion which turned out to be neither but instead a very general discussion, ably chaired/managed by Sarah Rodigari* on the topic Art should be instrumentalised to make a better world.

But just before I go into that I should briefly mention the CWA CBD who spoke the following night about their branch and projects. It was unfortunate that so many of the participants had been called back to busy lives by the time Paula Silva, Bec Stevens and Judith Abell spoke on behalf of their project on the Friday  Saturday night which is jolly interesting in terms of socially engaged practice both for its adopted model of and legitimate entry into the CWA network (the acronym stands for Country Womens Association, just in case you didn’t know) but just as much because of the vague confusion it caused me.

Unfortunately I had to leave this session before it ended, but I did get to hear a bit of talk about Bec Stevens CWA project STOP. REST. PLAY. , which was rewarding because this was precisely where my confusion lay.  Bec, who became a mum for the first time well within a month of when I did too, conceived it as a resting space for parents and young children. A place in the city where kids could safely play, tea could be made, nappies changed, sandwiches eaten and fruit divided: a place such as did not currently exist in Hobart. As a new(ish) mum also, I found this space to be an oasis in the city during it’s 3 weeks of operation and I quickly volunteered to be available for some shifts to help keep it running. Why not? I welcomed it, it helped out the CWA project and it was the easiest place to be with my son, Arthur, in tow. Plus Arthur loved to be there.

My confusion lay in the fact that although I loved it, welcomed it and have volunteered myself should another, more permanent, setup be orchestrated, I found myself unable to assess it as an artwork. I assumed I was so grateful for it’s existence in my role as a mum, that I was simply unable to look at it with a critical ‘art’ eye. And in the end I did love it. Why did it matter if I identified it as a good facility or good art? But it troubled me because I really wanted to be able to respond to it as a fellow artist.

When Bec spoke at the final night of TF, she talked about the small CWA shop, a few blocks up from the city centre, and how it was the only place she saw elderly women in the city. About children who are also visually absent from it’s streets.  Without anywhere to ‘be’ within the city centre, factions of our community like children and the elderly have lost ownership of the city. In fact the city is gravely in danger of becoming a site where only commerce has a home as opposed to a place where people ‘live’.  Bec sourced a site for the project with a broad shopfront with the express purpose of allowing children, families, breastfeeding mothers to be VISIBLE, and in doing so provided a valuable picture for our city of just how else things might be. This visualisation of a suggestion, an aspiration… well, of course that’s art.  And I’m suprised at myself that all it took was for me to be inside that frame to have difficulty seeing that.

But back to Thursday night…

It was a pretty rousing conversation and the entire room spoke with passion across the evening.  I do wish I had taken better notes (er… or any) or at least written this summation fresh off the back of it because mostly all I can remember well enough to report accurately are my own thoughts.  I’d hate to misrepresent anyone so this is all I shall tend to here.

I do hope the audio record of this event goes up on the Touchy Feely Tumblr some time soon because, in very brief summation, it was a ripping chat.

I listened and listened and when I couldn’t hold my thoughts any more they tumbled out of me like a big, wordy fountain.  Much of it was thoughts I had already constructed that day and written into my previous blog post but at the core of it was this:

That for me, the word should was highly problematic, for it suggests that artists have some social responsibility beyond attempting, with all authenticity, to produce relevant, wonderful, fine and GOOD art. In my opinion this is the only should an artist should concern themselves with.   This does not negate the work of the artist that does, as a part of their works construct or function, enact some direct societal change, but to agree with this statement somewhat discredits the work of artists that investigate an infinite variety of other subjects, themes and concerns.  It would suggest for instance, that an artist whose works are highly visual, aesthetic investigations does not have the same value as an artist whose work creates a more tangible societal ‘improvement’ (and I think we have all agreed through this project how malleable and subjective terms like ‘improvement’ are anyway).

Ultimately I would argue (and I did) that if you believe in the value of culture; it’s ability to both enrich and elevate society, then you must also believe that to ‘make a better world’, all one need do is to continue to practice as an artist and attempt through that practice to produce relevant, wonderful, fine and GOOD art.

This is no small thing.  For as one participant in this discussion so rightly pointed out, Australia is a country that doesn’t really value it’s artists. I noted last post (and suggested this as a reason for the current prevalence of relational and socially engaged practice), that artists are viewed very suspiciously outside our own field.  To continue to practice and identify as an artist is actually somewhat of a transgression against the wider Australian community. I know that I have been guilty of embarrassment in social situations when answering the question ‘What do you do?’, I have apologetically mumbled ‘Oh… I’m an artist…’ and extricated myself with some speed to avoid accusation and confrontation.

But I don’t do this any more, because despite making work that might appear to be entirely self-absorbed, I do believe that this is my role, my job and the best contribution I can make and I do my very best to produce relevant, wonderful, fine and GOOD art at all times. Of course I don’t hit that target each time. I just keep aiming and hope the bullseyes come more frequently.  And how very Australian of me to construct a sports analogy to defend the value of my societal role as an artist.

So yes, while I have managed (as I so often do) to turn this into a rant about myself, in truth this is my statement of confidence investment in the profession of visual artist. Cheerleading, if you will. Some of you make amazing art projects that, in a very direct fashion, work to improve lives, but relational and socially engaged works are a narrow mode of practice in the larger scheme of culture and there are an infinite number of ways to make art. So if you are an artist who wants to be the good in the world, just go make things and have ideas. Try very hard to make good art. I genuinely believe that this will also make a better world through providing ideas, aesthetics and aspiration.

Yes. I am that idealistic and sentimental.

And so what of sentimentality? The single niche I found for myself within this whole symposium. Is socially engaged art too sentimental? Is my art too sentimental? Well… we never got to that. And sadly I didn’t get a single response to my yardstick work.  So I have to then surmise that yes, it is too sentimental for discussion. I’m still unsure of details such as whether that means that people just don’t feel comfortable talking about it with me because the sentimentality makes them uncomfortable or because the sentimentality makes bad art which makes them uncomfortable, but the experiment so far speaks for itself. Or does it?

I would still, really, like to know.

* Yes, I’ll throw Sarah’s name in again.  She’s interesting, engaged and stayed to contribute right across the duration of the event. Plus she wore a lovely blouse. Okay -  full disclosure: I do seem to have become a fan.

Touchy Feely thoughts to date.

I want to use my blog to here organise some thoughts I have after last nights Touchy Feely presentations and discussion. I hope those practitioners more directly involved in relational or socially engaged practice will forgive me if I am rehashing thoughts you have already talked to death amongst yourselves. I feel like a visitor in a country under slight unrest. I apologise wholeheartedly if this is relational aesthetics 101.

Last night the most burning issue seemed to be about outcome. How do you record an ephemeral work for reportage back to those who funded it? And how remarkable that most artists speaking have, at times or all the time, not felt comfortable reporting the negative aspects of their social engagement, instead packaging the projects in the aftermath as something that more resembles the utopian glimmers of their initial, very genuine, aspiriation.

I find this a little suprising as I have always believed it was an important step in moving forward and in my small experience (I stepped away from the funding circuit some years ago and am only just starting to consider hopping back on the gravy train) reports of the ‘failures’ as well as the ‘successes’ were always a welcomed, and I always assumed, expected, part of the acquittal process.

Last night I raised the subject of ‘community arts’ as opposed to ‘art that engages with the community’. I trailed off a bit without making any particular point as, to some degree, I was thinking out loud. But I was certainly not moving to suggest that one was the right way to go about things and the other wrong… I think where I was going with that subject is it that it seemed a general consensus that it is very hard to get the genuine, bona-fide public to actually engage as you would wish which is often what leads to the ‘failures’ (we also discussed the impotence of the terms ‘success’ and ‘failure’ last night but I use them here for their convenience.) that occur. The participants instead become the invested art community, friends and family rather than the broader community.

When I began my work of the last 10 years where I have focussed almost exclusively on the self, it was in part because I felt very much that artists were mistrusted by the non-arts public. That we were viewed as tricksters, charlatans and scammers (I think I hoped I could win back some general-public pals to the cause of culture by giving up something of myself instead of asking something from them). I think that could also contribute to an explanation of why this mode of working is on the rise. We want to contribute positively. We want to be seen as contributing positively. Anyway… I raised the community arts subject last night because I think in the shift from ‘community arts’ to ‘art that engages with the community’ that there has been another shift where the responsibility of storysharing/data collection and presentation has moved from the public themselves to the artist, and that makes it harder to disprove these negative views of artists and our utopian experiments within the community. The term I used a lot last night and in the wake of the Iteration Again project is ‘colonialism’.

While I have to believe that the sentimentality of the artists impetus is entirely genuine, I do feel that the appearance of ‘colonialism’ must be very carefully negotiated and shed because of the way it pushes potential participants/audience away. And I do believe something may be able to be gleaned from the field of community arts practice to assist in that negotiation. Because regardless of whether artists begin to talk about and celebrate the failures as well as the successes, unless we view each artwork as the experiment it is, learn from those failures and take that knowledge forward, there is a distinct possibility, as Amy Spiers suggested, that artists may become trapped in a cycle of wishing to do good in a world that simply does not want their version of what ‘good’ is.

I may be wrong, but when discussion turned to funding last night, I got the impression that, largely in this mode of practice, funding goes towards the cost of documentation. Well produced photographs, video or a publication that asserts the artwork took place. If it is true that the failures fail to be reported and investigated because one feels responsibility to the funding body to present only a positive outcome, then surely it is better to dispense with the idea of funding a document at all. Just make a work. Let it be over when it is over except in your thoughts and words and the way it goes on to inform your later practice. I suspect I’m oversimplifying the problem but perhaps, as in Sarah Rodigaris case, the work remains truly ephemeral. It just happened. The work for anyone but Sarah or those she encountered must remain an elusive concept and we must simply trust that it occured.

By this I don’t mean to naively suggest that projects centered in human interaction should cost nothing to produce. Just that perhaps this problem might be simpler than it appears. When I was a child and wanted something that cost I found ways to make the money or if you like, to fund the project. It might serve us well to revisit this mode of operation as Sarah did in selling off her belongings. Sell something. Make something someone needs. And when we do apply for funding, rather than focussing on publications we should consider instead, applying for an area of the project where ‘value’ is more concrete- the wages of the artists involved. I know the artists time and talent is often devalued in favour of other aspects to enable a project to take flight on limited funds, but it should be non-negotiable. It shouldn’t require documentation or a successful outcome, merely a well-kept timesheet. Success or failure, receiving a wage will still help you move forward to the next project. But I have digressed…

At the risk of sounding like a sudden evangelical Sarah Rodigari fan, I was cheered by her reluctance to give too much away of what occurred on her journey. She seemed protective of the people she encountered, who became enmeshed in her artwork along the way and the more I digest what she has made and what she has to say, the more I believe that this may be a little lacking – that is to say, the lack is an understanding that when you are engaging with the public for the purposes of creating an artwork, those who do enter into the role of participant are doing so very generously and we need to consider more carefully what they receive in return for their engagement and what we do with the material sourced from/through them. And this is outside of any University driven ethics requirement, but rests simply in human responsibility to other humans.

Unless we are particularly resourceful, we pay in some way for every other material we might use as an artist. How are we paying for this material? How are we paying the public for their engagement? We can’t be naive and ignore the fact that a successful project is often our stepping stone to the next opportunity. But how are those giving time and sharing their lives being valued and compensated? I don’t believe that answer is that participants should be paid (I was uncomfortable with Hobart artist’s James Newitt’s 2009 work $1 for your story because of the named value it put upon the participants contributions) but I do think consideration of the possibility that neither the artist nor a funding body entirely owns the content (their likeness, experience, words or emotion) that people contribute (whether or not they are anonymous) is an important ethical idea that must be given greater consideration in documentation, reportage and promotion. The art project merely becomes a facility where this data is stored and respect for the data and it’s true owner must not be forgotten.

Perhaps this has not become as big an issue as it (arguably) should, because as many pointed out last night, the reluctance of the general public to become involved means that so often the demographic of participants is made up of friends, family, other artists; people with a personal investment in the success of the project. But if this issue was to garner greater consideration, perhaps the desired participants might not be so hard to source, projects might have more genuine outcomes, experiments might have more accurate results that we can learn from…

What do you think? I don’t know if I’m right about any of this but I certainly wonder about all of it.

I am glad to have all that off my chest and in safe blog storage for later rumination because tonights Touchy Feely panel discussion examines the suggestion that ‘Art should be instrumentalised to make a better world.’ and requires me to think about different things.

Now, hopefully, I can go talk on topic without doing boring dredges back to last nights yak-yak that send everyone snoozing and are alarmingly ‘off-point’.

I shall hit the ‘publish’ button and go form my thoughts about that right now…

Voodoo

Exhibition open.  Dust settled.

Here’s a sidenote about A Pack of Lies that I’d like to talk about.

CAST, the gallery where the exhibition is being held, is my former workplace, which you may or may not know.  I worked there for a relatively long time.  My first five years there were a total joy and I felt like the luckiest gal in town to have the job that I did.  The last two years however were a different story, primarily due to my own, at that stage undiagnosed, illness.

My anxiety led me to be paranoid and fearful and I was often physically ill at work because of it.  By the end this happened most days at least once, sometimes more.  I would repeatedly run and hide in the toilet and be sick.

After leaving the job I returned a few times to pick up some casual work, extra admin I think and in one instance, truck driving.  But every time I returned to the building I felt ill again.  I found it beyond embarrassing and tended to pretend it hadn’t happened so it took some time to notice the pattern.  I’m quite good at denial.

I remember post-diagnosis, better but still quite socially phobic as I continue to be, being terribly pleased when I worked out that it wasn’t my old colleagues that were making me feel ill, as I had suspected, but I was able to track the nausea specifically to the building.  The architecture itself made me sick.

Because of this, I have largely avoided going there, as you might avoid a particular food that makes you ill.  This means I have missed quite a bit of art that I would have liked to see and I have lost touch with a lot of people.  I have (literally) stomached it briefly for the occasional friend’s exhibition opening but I could never take it for long.

When the curator, lovely Sarah, first approached me by email to become involved in Erotographomania, I was very apprehensive.  I didn’t know how I could do this.  I installed a work for Matt there once in his absence and found it a little hard-going and felt psychological aftershocks for a little while afterwards.

I confessed to her, probably a little obliquely, that I had some difficulty and gave some suggestions as to why I might not be the artist she was looking for.  But when we met up to discuss it, I began to be filled with hope that making and installing a work would be the voodoo that would break the curse that 27 Tasma Street seemed to hold over me.  When I conceived of A Pack of Lies it really felt like it might mean something about the person I was in those last couple of years there.  Someone very confused and who had been subject to many paranoid, false ideas.  I became convinced it could help me heal.

The organisation had changed since I worked there and what was once my poky office space was now a broad, mostly empty foyer containing some seating plus books, catalogues and cultural free papers.  I decided to bypass the actual gallery and to instead install the gallery version of the work around the space where my desk had sat.  The show was already full of some big works and gallery space was at a premium so, curatorially-speaking, this was actually quite helpful.

When the time came to install, the use of this space had changed again so it is not exactly as I imagined, but the intention remains.

So are you wondering if it worked?

Well… I don’t see the experiment as being over just yet.  I tried to build up my exposure by driving past the building every day leading up to the install.  I had a fairly nasty panic attack early in the day beforehand but I just felt a little twitchy when I actually installed.  At the opening I felt quite fearful and as we had taken Arthur along, had the perfect excuse to skip away quickly and put him to bed.

Once home I was really disappointed in myself and the voodoo.  I had wanted too much for the anxiety switch to be immediately flicked to it’s ‘off’ position, and that’s a big ask.  But in the days that have passed I have realised that I need to go back to properly appreciate the show as a whole, and in doing so, can be there without the added stress of a lot of people.

So… watch this space.

I hope if you came along to the opening, you’ll forgive me if I didn’t say hi, or only did so very briefly.  I was struggling.

But one morning early this year I woke up so tired and angry at the things my own brain puts me through that now I’m trying harder to be brave and to do everything I can to fix it and be done with this stuff.

There’s too much other stuff to do.

Wish me luck.

Language

January is fast disappearing and I am pretty well at my desk as much as I can be,  getting ready for these two Feb shows, so still not blogging as much as I would like to be.

The art is the thing though eh? I know my priorities…

For the Jazz Festival project, I am working with two wonderful translators for the deaf, Roey and John, to develop a video for the Jazz Café.  I will start shooting the video in about a week but in the meantime, at our meeting last week, Roey generously did some on the spot translations for my still camera of one of the great classics (and a strong childhood memory song for me), Summertime.

While never really having mastered any other languages (I just ‘get by’ overseas) I am always fascinated with the changes in construct, syntax and logic that happen in translation so this part of the project is really interesting.  I enjoy being amazed about how much I don’t know; in this case about how many signed languages are in use in any one place and about how many things cease to make sense or change meaning as they are converted – translation is truly an art.

When the translators (among other people) ask me where the idea came from for the work, I have to confess that I think I lifted the idea from my old friend Louise.  A gifted writer and eternally original thinker, about fifteen years ago Louise expressed interest in submitting some work to a local festival of erotic writing.  There was to be an evening of writers reading their prose for an audience and she had the idea to ask a deaf performer to sign the work for her instead.  She was fascinated by the idea of how the physical signs for her words might heighten their erotic effect.

Unfortunately it seemed to be too touchy a request and she was unable to get any leads to find an appropriate and willing performer so it never happened.  But I never forgot it.

It’s actually a much better idea than mine but I hope in my case a visual translation of these classic jazz lyrics will at least bring something new to them for the fans of the genre.

…and I hope Louise still writes.  I have no doubt she still thinks!

In case you didn’t know…

…we are planning on huffing and squeezing this little babby out here at home under the care of a private midwife of some 30 years experience who has been caring for me now for a couple of months already and will continue to do so with increasing frequency up to the birth and beyond.  The same professional every time. Taking all my details, measuring all my particulars and getting to know me, M and Babby really well all the way through the process as we get to know her too.

Our only other option was public hospital care, which I am led to believe is very good, but for me the preference was for continuity of care and the option to build a familiar and trusted relationship with my caregiver.  This is of immense importance to me.

We have no private insurance and could never afford an obstetrician.  Our midwife will cost us a couple of grand and after giving her a small deposit, she is happy to wait for us to get our Government Baby Bonus after the birth to receive the balance.

Babby is due in April 2010.

Guild Insurance has withdrawn their policies for independent midwives (they were the only insurance provider for the field) with the result that from July 2010 any midwife working outside the hospital system who would continue to practice antenatal or postnatal care or attend births would be operating outside of the law.

There has been some move for the Government to come to the rescue by providing Medicare funding and indemnity insurance but our Health Minister, Senator Nicola Roxon,  is managing to continue to put the careers of midwives in further jeopardy and once again take away the choice for affordable and experienced antenatal care and the option of home birth.

An amendment was made to Government policy in September giving midwives a 2 year stay of execution from the dreaded July 2010 ‘cease-practice-or-be-damned’ date but that only allows them to attend home births without insurance – pre or post-natal care will be illegal.  This is awkward enough, but now sneaky Senator Roxon has slipped in a new bill that proposes that while midwives WILL still be allowed to practice by attending births,  this  shall happen only under the supervision of an obstetrician.  And still no pre or post-natal care by midwives allowed.  This is referred to in the bill as ‘collaborative arrangements’.

This again means no home births and a model of continuous care only for those able to afford private health insurance or their own obstetrician.

I ask you – how could the government of a progressive, modern nation allow this to happen all for the sake of insurance monies?

Our choice of a home birth with private midwife is not only because we believe hospitalisation is for emergency or illness (touch wood all will be fine – of course I’m prepared to go if tiny sprog needs me to) but also for this valuable continuity of care.

The chance to get to know the person who will help our baby arrive with what will be extremely intimate (although gentle) intervention, over six months of care is invaluable.  Throughout this time we laugh and share and palpate and listen to the heartbeat and swoosh of the placenta as she passes on the wisdom of her considerable experience and helps us prepare for the biggest day of our lives.

Postnatally she will drop in every day, a couple of times if necessary, to assist and make sure we are feeding and managing well.  She will make herself available for three months afterwards for calls and queries and nervous new-mum visits.

She will stay with me as long as I want/need her to in labour and let it take as long as it takes,  rather than rush or induce which would likely either cause a tear or require a cut, things many people now take for granted as a necessary part of the birth process. She will coach me to slow things down to allow this all to happen naturally.

She also knows when it IS time to go to hospital.  She works there too.

All this for less than half of the Government baby bonus.

I am shocked that had it taken us a mere 3 months longer to conceive, that the option to do this in what we believe is the best and safest way for us, would be taken away.  How can the Government allow this option to be taken away from us should we choose to have a second child ?  Away from everybody?  How much does a public hospital birth cost anyway before Medicare steps in and takes care of it for me?  I bet it’s considerably more than our birth plan is costing us now.  How much money are those who choose home-birth saving the already drained public health system per year and why is this not acknowledged and supported?

Until December 11, the end of this week, the The Senate Community Affairs Committee will be accepting submissions addressing the terms of reference laid out for the inquiry into the bills put forward by Senator Roxon.  I am part way through writing mine but I just wanted to post this in case anyone else out there feels strongly enough about this, either because of their own pregnancy/birth experiences or simply because they support the right of parents-to-be to choose the model of care that suits them best without discrimination of class or income level.

The invitation for submissions is here and the terms of reference are laid out here .  There is also valuable discussion which may help you frame your submission on the Australian Natural Parenting Forum here.

I won’t be posting my submission here (legally it will invalidate it) but feel free to get angry with words yourself, just remember to address the terms of reference in order to keep it relevant (and heard).

..and thanks for sitting through this (if you are here at the end).  It’s important to me.

Back to art and bunnies soon enough.

The Holy Trinity’s 1200CC Mary: Worshipping the Teenaged Wasteland

Don’t cry
Don’t raise your eye
It’s only teenage wasteland

Pete Townshend, Baba O’Riley

Photo by Kevin Leong

I remember massive, red dirt mounds, the byproduct of ‘new-ness’ that seemed to signify something as potent as an egg about to hatch.  Incomplete but habitable houses, in fresh subdivisions, in brand new suburbs, marked out by the rust coloured piles shoveled to the perimeter.

These mounds were a site for throning oneself, for staring out into a choice of undeveloped bushland in one direction or back to the established town in the other.  They were places to gain independence and some privacy before school or around teatime, at the darker, bookends of the day.  Maybe you would share a sneaky cig and swap heady and naive, adolescent divination; the sort of thing that might predict a future destiny (rock star, leader of an alien investigation task squad, world’s best hairdresser) or lover (rock star, pop star, porn star, that guy/girl whose dad owns the shop where you buy your chips).  These mounds became sites of aspiration and of fantasy.

In the name of the suburb, and of the dirt and of the feral cat,

Amen.

Here the mounds are transposed indoors and the adolescents are the imaginary male alter egos of three female artists.  Instead of imagining themselves as famous musicians or movie stars, these egos instead imagine themselves into the cornerstone of catholic doctrine: Capital G, God, his half-human son, Jesus and that mysterious bird, the Holy Ghost.  And why not?

In a spirit of pure fun, the trappings of the faith are translated with a camp and juvenile ad-hoc flair. The focus of the site is the grotto of the Virgin Mary, the previously unsullied mother of Christ, who opens her blue marshmallow robe to display six breasts like a beast in a strange marriage of Coney Island freak-booth and an Amsterdam shop window.  She bears the scars of having been toasted and served up to the faithful in gooey lumps scooped onto popsicle sticks.  Served up by masked pussycat alterboys (better behaved than feral),  I can tell you now she was sickly sweet but not entirely unsatisfying.

At the opposite end of the room in place of a confessional stands a hut made of cardboard boxes, where inside one can ‘relieve oneself’ (in private and by candlelight) of sinful thoughts with the aid of a ‘girls with guns’ magazine and a blurred, obscure video of a female figure disrobing.  Oh look it’s Jesus!  Wank for Jesus!  He’s got tits too and he’s all flesh.

In his physical form he roams the space in a black gimp suit, his intestines outlined in a flesh coloured felt (he always was a little desperate to prove, wasn’t he?).

I’m human too guys, see guys, just like you.
But wait.. aren’t you either the son of God or a cyst that grew legs…?

Another video depicts the Holy Ghost floating and gesturing its owl-headed way through the universe, its many-phallused collar there to penetrate you, to open you up to Gods word.  It floats around like an old Stevie Nicks video.  Stevie Nicks – with dicks.

God on the other hand is all about God.  All beard and cloudy arms he’s a show-off dazzling us with rainbows and lightning, endlessly impressed with his own skill.  As he inhabits the space, his desire to pop a wheelie is almost palpable.

In the name of the Bearded, and of the Gimp and of the Bird-Headed Hippie,

Amen.

The Trinity come together on occasion to patrol the space on pink dirt-bikes and communicate through electronic voice boxes mounted inside the heads of feral cats on frighteningly wired wristbands.  High tinny voices scream at you to ‘get off the dirt’ and remind you that you are just a visitor here.  But you may stay to admire their work; the rainbow made of fence palings and tree branches and the glowing rain cloud made of plastic milk-bar straws that releases a static rain of glue-string.  There is even a satellite dish made of cardboard and fairy lights to draw prayer from the ether.

Wow.

Here is a universe and a theology created on site. But remember, this is not really the Godhead.  It is three young boys pretending to be the Godhead as evidenced by the ornamental aesthetic of skulls and guns that litter the dirt.  But this is not really three young boys.  It is three women pretending to be three boys pretending to be the Godhead and the presence of these three women is still felt in the retro 80’s aesthetic (the era of their own adolescence for the most part).  The fairy-floss pinkness of the bikes, the marshmallow and the cats and the rainbow itself, which immediately evokes sickly (but highly desirable at the right age) Lisa Frank stationary and scented erasers – all these speak strongly of ‘girl’.

It’s an identity matroyshka.  We begin rooted in reality with the Arthead (three female artists) nested cosily within the fantasy identity of the Dickhead (three adolescent boys) who are in turn enclosed by the colourful outer shell of the Godhead (the three pronged cosmic deity driving the universe).

Sally, take my hand…

OK, I’m up for it.

In the name of the Artists and of the Boys and of the Cosmic Engine,

Amen.

Sally Rees, October 2009

This text was commissioned by CAST for the 1200CC Mary catalogue.
1200CC Mary continues at CAST Gallery until November 8, 2009.

Essay by Monique Germon

‘The Western World, it is argued, is largely nihilistic today in the sense that it no longer believes in grand truth narratives. When that happens, people will believe, at least temporarily, any story you spin at them. In the absence of grand truth narratives, society as it was once understood ceases to exist. Instead of the universal Church or the march of History, instead of society, we have a fun-fair array of booths hawking crystals and tales of intergalactic visitors; we have celebrity astrologers, wonder drugs, tantric Buddhism, predictions or mysterious epidemics, football frenzy and a vague fear of what Wheen calls ‘secretive, impersonal forces’ ruling our lives. We have been atomised. Suspended alone in a state of unrelieved apprehension bordering on panic, we cast about frenetically for some story line to write ourselves into. Instead of citizens, we have been turned into individual consumers; instead of tradition, we have had fashion foisted on us; instead of history, we are force fed docudramas about the mystery of the Sphinx. Desperate for company and direction, we’ll form a herd behind anyone – Princess Di, JK Rowling, the Pope, Barack Obama, Lacan, anyone. Just tell us a story. It may be humbug, it may be bullshit; it doesn’t matter: we don’t know the difference anymore. Just tell us a story. Any story. Please.’

Robert Dessaix ‘On Humbug’ (MUP 2009)
pp. 87-88

Six months ago I was in a caravan in North West Tasmania enjoying a rather hilarious discussion on both art and sexuality, when my host suddenly made the following announcement: ‘Artists are cunts. I don’t understand the bastards. I’ve seen men out here dying in those seas so you pricks can have your fucking crays and your flash openings in Hobart with all the yuppie snobs. It’s not right and you know why? It’s bullshit! They’re all up themselves – fucking artist cunts.’

A week later I entered the local pub with a photograph of Sally Rees wearing a t-shirt which stated in written text across her chest,‘I’M A CUNT’ and pinned it on the carefully guarded noticeboard. I watched as the picture was received and sat in an interesting moment where this work, recently commissioned for an exhibition in Sydney, found its way to a rather unsuspecting audience. Rees in all her glory looked over the pubs regulars evoking laughter and conversation whilst they in turn applauded her sense of humour, not so far away from the North West town of Burnie where she  was raised.

Autoportrait (Update) 2009

Sally Rees’ work speaks to us of our human selves. Her practice has the unique capacity to involve self-examination, whilst avoiding any stigma of narcissism. Rees dives head first into emotions and experience that are confrontational and often unpleasant. Her work therefore reaches into what it means to be a human being as she boldly explores realms within the human psyche that most of us spend time avoiding as best we can.

Rees’ personal approach to art making invites her audience to engage in a manner that does not, in turn, punish with vacuous performance or over-intellectualised enquiry. She deliberates and expresses, providing an experience of awareness that carefully side-steps the unfortunate trend of alienating audiences through elitist delivery.  Her work for this latest exhibition offers us a personal insight into the contradictions and dualities that contribute to the inner-conflicts which human beings can often experience. Her offerings are subtle, considered, elegant and measured and possess a timbre of gentle innocence that is consequentially, anything but naïve.

We’re at a place in human history where we clearly need to understand why and who we are. As a result of this need to genuinely understand and to break through the artificial walls that can indeed overwhelm us, some of the more poignant expressions we are seeing are those which delve into matters regarding the human condition – specifically through a deliberately personal enquiry. At a time where people are searching so desperately for personal meaning (so much so that we’re witnessing the abandonment of individual narratives and the borrowing of others in the hope of greater notoriety and recognition), the most rewarding experiences are those that have an underlying essence of honesty and therefore, authenticity. It is through artists such as Rees that we gain access to such truths, for we are able to experience the sheer purity of her contribution, which comes to us through this process of sharing, and of sharing very deeply.

Rees is one of the few artists I have known who has the ability and conviction to self-reflect in a direct and unadulterated manner. Her work has an element of generosity, which furthermore, births a particular kind of integrity, seldom seen in contemporary art practice today. She is blatant and brazen in that she is willing to vent, to purge and to absolve through catharsis and exposure, through a courageous practice of personally expressing her individual truths, and this she does by simply – telling her own story.

Monique Germon – July 2009

Disquiet Year

Disquiet Year closed on July 25th and due to a combo of unpacking the new house, starting full time work (!!!) and having a birthday, I have neglected to post.  But- there is a FB album of images here.

It consisted of two video works, this image, some large inkjet self-portraits doused in wine (called Blush 1-3) and a series of texts (Letters to M) made of cheap alphabet stickers dotted around the gallery and out into surroundings like the toilets, adjoining café and the carpark.  These texts are drawn from an ongoing correspondence I’ve mentioned here before, and drew some positive comments, which pleased me greatly but were also quite a suprise to receive.

Actually, the show generally drew positive comments from those few people I have talked to about it but, like most artists,  I am really interested in how it effected people either positively or negatively and their responses to this. There were many, many people at the opening for a start, many of whom I simply don’t really know.  If you were one and have stumbled across this posting, I would love you to share your thoughts on it in the comments below.

The two video works seemed to be rather polarising in that one or the other tended to be peoples favourite work in the show.  Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch played on a large monitor placed sideways on the floor with a long yellow tail of an extension cord trailing back to the socket at the wall.  The monitor shows an image of a glowing radiator laid over my face as I make the sound repeatedly, spitting and hyperventilating a little as I go.  The sideways monitor is a schtick of mine I have used a few times and gets trotted out as a device to indicate that all is not well and that things are somewhat askew.  The face with chattering teeth embedded inside a radiator has a whiff of that too.  I realised after making it that what the work actually does alongside these suggestions, is to replicate the stutter I developed when I broke down last year.  Throw in the fact that I had been listening to a lot of David Bowie (Ch-ch-changes…) and a curious identification I have with the mump-faced lady in the radiator from David Lynch’s Eraserhead and once I was done, the work made perfect sense (to me at least).

Funnily enough, I was told that ‘the lady in the radiator’ is precisely what the other video, VS reminded someone of.  I was actually trying to channel the figures of German expressionist cinema for that one.  Hang on, was I?  Or did I just observe the resemblance once it was shot…  Travel back in time through the blog to find out…

Projected onto a plastic screen through a wave-form of halloweeny blood that drips into a fringe of skulls, it’s the oldest work in the show but shown for the first time.  It features two Sallys that hate each other and hover, disembodied in an electrical hum and periodically snarl, spit big gobs at each other, or flip each other off, each insult augmented by an ‘action’ sound poached from a vintage video game.  It has the effect of a giant game of pong where no-one is in control. It is also the only work in the show not to turn out just as I had imagined, and that threw me for a bit.  But I think we’ve made our peace now, that work and I.

Overall I was pleased with it.  While there are lessons to be learned about testing EVERYTHING before installation (especially if you are as inflexible as I can be) I was glad I was restrained and cut back on the content to really give everything some space.  I’m glad the short run-up time meant that I had to show works that are a little more difficult for me to put out there.  If given more time I may have given myself an unearned slap, decided that no-one wants to see my ‘dirty laundry’  and whipped up something cheerier, sillier and a little more smart-arsed.  Mostly – in this instance if not in the case of Encore – I was also pleased people still managed to find some humour in there.

Maybe my darkness is not as dark as it feels when I’m there.  And that could be a good thing to know.

Thanks so much to the Inflight Board for asking me to do it and supporting me with such care through the process.

p.s.  My correspondence partner, Monique Germon wrote a wonderful essay for the little catalogue (which may have been more popular than the show come to think of it…).  I might ask her permission to post it here soon.