August 2014

trouble

RMIT First Site Gallery presents the 2014 Mentorship Exhibition

Gasoline Eyedrops Chris Gooch & Mandy Ord 29 July – 10 Aug

Opening Night 5.30pm Tuesday 29 July Workshop: Autobiographical comics – keeping it real 2pm Wednesday 30 July Artist Talk by Chris Gooch 2pm Wednesday 6 August Artist talks and forum at RMIT Open Day 1pm Sunday 10 August gasoline-eyedrops.tumblr.com RMIT First Site Gallery RMIT_Link_Arts www.rmit.edu.au/firstsitegallery 344 Swanston St

He can’t tell you about our season... but you can find out more at thecapital.com.au

SeaSon

2014

DARREN WARDLE: Head Case, to 10 August ANGIE BLACK, JAN HENDRIK BRÜGGEMEIER, LEON CMIELEWSKI, ELIZABETH DUNN, SIRI HAYES, SCOTT LEWIS, TIMOTHY NOHE, La TrobeJOSEPHINE University Visual Arts Centre RENUKA RAJIV, STARRS, STEPHEN TURPIE: Nature in 121 View Street August – 5 October the Dark, 14 Bendigo, VIC, 3550 +61 3 5441 8724 latrobe.edu.au/vacentre

LA TROBE UNIVERSITY ART INSTITUTE: Cicatrix: Altered Perceptions of Beauty as a Perfection of Form, 6 August – 28 September La Trobe University Visual Arts Centre 121 View Street, Bendigo, VIC, 3550 T: 03 5441 8724 121 View Street E: vac@latrobe.edu.au Bendigo, VIC, 3550 W: latrobe.edu.au/vac +61 3 5441 8724 Gallery hours: Tue – Fri 10am-5pm. Weekends 12-5pm latrobe.edu.au/vacentre La Trobe University Visual Arts Centre

Image: Darren Wardle, Head Case Study 13, (detail) 2014, oil and acrylic on linen. Courtesy of the artist and Fehily Contemporary, Melbourne.

we’re all about the ear COMMUNITY RADIO FOR CASTLEMAINE AND BEYOND

www.mainfm.net 03 5472 4376

FEATURES (09) COMICS FACE Ive Sorocuk (12) THE MADNESS OF ART

Jim Kempner

(14) DOBLE & STRONG:

SYNCHRONOUS Inga Walton (20) AS STARS FALL:

NOVEL EXTRACT Christie Nieman (25) PEOPLE I’VE INTERVIEWED

FOR THE POSITION OF

BEING ME Darby Hudson (26) WILLIAM BLAKE:

THE IMMORTAL MAN ...

(38) AUGUST SALON

Inga Walton

Augustin’

(56) ACTEASE Courtney Symes (64) MELBURNIN’ Inga Walton (70) GREETINGS FROM

BEYOND THE PALE Ben Laycock

COVER: Doble & Strong, Dermochrome (detail) 2014, gloss enamel on chromogenic print, mounted on aluminium composite board, (3 panels) 178 x 125 cm (each). (Courtesy of Art Equity, Sydney & NKN Gallery, Melbourne). Melbourne Art Fair, Royal Exhibition Building, Carlton (VIC) 13 – 17 August - melbourneartfair.com.au | Art Equity, Level 1, 66 King Street, Sydney (NSW) - artequity.com.au | Artist site dobleandstrong.com.au Issue 115: AUGUST 2014 trouble is an independent monthly mag for promotion of arts and culture Published by Trouble Magazine Pty Ltd. ISSN 1449-3926 CONTRIBUTORS Ive Sorocuk, Jim Kempner, Courtney Symes, Inga Walton, Ben Laycock.

Find our app at the AppStore follow us on issuu or twitter, or subscribe at troublemag.com READER ADVICE: Trouble magazine contains artistic content that may include nudity, adult concepts, coarse language, and the names, images or artworks of deceased Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people. Treat Trouble intelligently, as you expect to be treated by others. Collect or dispose of thoughtfully.

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Reproduced with the permission of the Sidney Nolan Trust / Bridgeman Images

art comedy series

season 3, episode 1: The Boondoggle Is it a boondoggle or isn’t it? Jim and Dru can’t wait to talk to the new curator of the Jersey City Museum.

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back to back

season 3, episode 2: Sal Hawkins Jim has discovered a new artist. Or has he discovered Jim?

visit: themadnessofart.com/

DOBLE STRONG

synchronous

Inga Walton

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As part of the fourteenth biennial Melbourne Art Fair (13-17 August, 2014) Art Equity will début two large-scale works from Doble & Strong.

Established artists in their own right who maintain separate careers, painter Robert Doble and photographer Simon Strong first collaborated on the work Salathiel (I Have Asked Of God) (2009), a finalist in the 58th Blake Prize For Religious Art. Three subsequent exhibitions (2010-13) have seen Doble & Strong refine a distinctive, sometimes macabre, and inherently unsettling œuvre, one that disturbs and provokes as much as it intrigues.

These works serve as something of a cautionary tale, presenting a dystopian future that is both uncompromisingly beautiful and deeply sinister. Doble & Strong seem attuned to our latent fears and anxieties about the transformative possibilities of technological and medical progress, whereby only the aesthetically and genetically sound will be favoured. It is as though the confronting ideas put forward by futuristic films such as Andrew Niccol’s Gattaca (1997) had come to pass.

“Our works present perhaps a more extreme narrative about the ‘advancement’ of the human race due to ongoing scientific experimentation, and increasing emphasis on manipulating genetic structures. Perhaps in the future humans will all be genetically modified, and no longer able to exist in the form we do now,” Doble suggests. “The potential demise of the human race due to over-population, destruction of the environment, contamination and pollution, means that people could be living in purified biospheres, or board escape pods in order to flee to some distant planet to escape our shit! It often seems as though we are racing towards our doom, while actually knowing the outcome.”

The interdisciplinary process, applying paint to a photographic surface, and the interpersonal negotiation, between two strong-minded artists, has only grown in sophistication. “This is, in many ways, different to my own work; we have to leave our personal egos at the door. Simon and I have an understanding now, that for us the collaboration has to be as one unit, a coherent statement. Our working process has evolved to be more fluid, there’s a synchronicity now”, Doble believes.

“We both sort of suggest similar things, and we’re both more aware of the overall outcome. We make some preliminary sketches to note the position of the model, where other aspects are going, and to map out the various elements. However, when it comes to applying the paint it becomes more of a spontaneous process that takes on its own life; the joy of it is often the ‘accidents’ that push a work in a different direction”.

PREVIOUS SPREAD: Doble & Strong, Untitled (detail) 2014, gloss enamel on chromogenic print, mounted on aluminium composite board, 178 x 125 cm.

Doble & Strong / Inga Walton

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“We sourced the correct electrodes and constructed the cables using parts from an electronic components store.”

The development of his working relationship with Strong has opened up aspects of Doble’s own practice that have perhaps been somewhat unfulfilled. “I’ve always been interested in the figure, but I don’t want to sit and paint that because other artists do it so much better, and I don’t want my work to be a pastiche of someone else. Photography provides a window that allows me to access the figurative, and the handling of the paint is really organic, very much like my own ‘plasma’ works,” he reflects.

“The way we work with paint is not what people would normally envisage,” Strong agrees. “It is not the same as painting on canvas. I had already watched Robert do [his] ‘plasma’ and ‘gravity’ paintings, and it was actually that which led to the discussions we had about possibly collaborating. Obviously my ability to use the paint that we use, and the techniques we employ have improved as we have done more and more work, but it’s always a challenge to try to steer and anticipate what the paint will do, and we’re always on the lookout for different techniques and processes.”

For these two works, the inspiration was a 1940s era operating table around which the wider concept was devised. “It was only when we actually photographed [the table] that we really decided how Haylie [the model] was going to be positioned. The last position we shot was the one we used. The shot was also composited from several more close up shots, since we knew the work would be large and divided into three panels”, Strong recounts.

“After I had composited the shots together, we then decided to add the ECG electrodes and cables and the cuts. We sourced the correct electrodes and constructed the cables using parts from an electronic components store. We then shot Haylie again with the electrodes attached in the same position as the original shots, which made it reasonably easy to add them to the final images.”

The tonal subtlety and deft deployment of the painted elements is testament to the duo’s exactitude. “In terms of the paint, apart from a few discussions and a rough sketch, we really decided on the day we started painting. We did, however, carefully choose the colours: even matching swatches at the paint shop to fullscale test prints. It’s the only work whereby we’ve considered the colour palette so carefully. We knew we had to execute the works in a short period of time, so we wanted to be completely prepared”, notes Strong.

Doble & Strong / Inga Walton

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Doble & Strong, Dermochrome 2014, gloss enamel on chromogenic print, mounted on aluminium composite board, (3 panels) 178 x 125 cm (each). (Courtesy of Art Equity, Sydney & NKN Gallery, Melbourne). Melbourne Art Fair, Royal Exhibition Building, Carlton (VIC) - melbourneartfair.com.au | Art Equity, Level 1, 66 King Street, Sydney (NSW) artequity.com.au | Artist site - dobleandstrong.com.au

NOVEL EXTRACT / CHAPTER 12 ROBIN

It was about seven-thirty and I was sitting out on the roof, waiting for Mum to come home. I’d been up there for ages, escaping by imagining the wattles, and the eucalypts, and the magpies and the Masked Lapwings, and the White-faced Heron, and the Australian Wood-ducks down on the dam, with their strange catbaby cries, and when I saw the dark curly head of my mother pass through the front gate beneath me I felt a rush of joy like when I was little. Like in summer when it was still light when she got home, and Dad and I used to walk the kilometre up to the top of the drive and take a gate post each, and wait for her little silver hatchback, and she’d drive up and stick her head out and yell, ‘Hi-ho, Silver,’ and slow down just enough for us to climb on the roof and ride the little car all bumpy down the corrugated dirt road all the way home. As she walked through the gate beneath me, she didn’t look up. Lucky. I had a sense that seeing me out on the roof might inspire a fairly high crank-factor in her. Even though, strictly speaking, I hadn’t really left the house. I was just on it, instead of in it.

I closed my eyes again, feeling the heat of the last bit of the sun on my face as it slanted out from the city. And I did it again. I left this new house, new life, and let my old home overtake me, just as it was in the weeks before I left. I let it grow more real than the place I was in. More present. No longer in the past. And I really felt it. I was linked with the place. Not another rooftop in sight, just rolling paddocks on every side, disappearing into the dark valley below ... ... and the sun peeking at me over the mountains to my left. And I’m up in a tree and my hair is being blown softly across my face in front of my eyes. The setting sun catches the strands so that they glow red. The mountains at my right are all blue and hazy, because the air is still full of the smoke from the fires. The big granite rock that gives the hill opposite me its oh-so-familiar outline – ‘the pinnacle’ – appears to be hovering in that blue air, hanging in space like some kind of heavenly landscape. I’m sitting in a peppermint gum and its leaves are long, thin and elegant, and they are grey-green except where they catch the sun, and then they are bright streamers of red too, like my hair.

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And I look out through the leaves and see the hill sloping away from me, down to the creek where all the wattles grow. I can smell the flowers, even from way up here. The evening air is warm, and the sweet wattle smell mixes with the complicated smell of dry eucalyptus leaves. It makes me feel alive.

If I wanted, I could just step right off my tree and float on that smell. I would float down across the creek, and then over the farmland on the valley floor, all the way to the mountains. And I could float and float. All that wide, open space. All that air. It’s incredible ...

‘Flame?’

My eyelids opened and my view ran into the factory wall opposite. It was such a claustrophobic sensation. So close. And everything was different to before; everything had that odd greeny-yellow tinge it gets before a summer storm and I felt like I was trying to breathe steam.

‘Flame Robin?’ Mum called again, but I knew she would be getting changed into her home clothes and I didn’t have to hurry just yet. I closed my eyes again and felt for the air of home, trying to remember the smells in weather like this, the heavy eucalyptus scent on pre-storm air.

But then I heard something. I didn’t create that sound in my imaginings. The call of a Bush Stone-curlew was rising in the air around me. I stopped and my eyes flew open. I twisted my head up and then around, looking at the sky, and then at the roof of the factory opposite, where I thought the sound had come from. But there was no sound anymore, nothing, and I couldn’t see anything there for the brilliance of the setting sun.

I shook my head to make the echoes of the sound, and the feeling that went with it – sadness, grief, loss – vanish. Why would my mind do that to me? First the parklands, and now this.

I didn’t like it here. It was making me strange.

I heard Mum climbing the first stairs of the ladder to my room.

As Stars Fall / Christie Nieman

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‘Robbie, are you in your room?’

Shit. ‘Yes, Mum!’ I called towards the window. And I heard her retreat again to the bottom of the stairs.

I swung myself back in my window and went and sat on my bed. My bedroom wall was covered with photos of home – photos of me and Dad, photos of Pen-dog and Mo, photos of the hills and the bush – all framed with the stack of odd and mismatching frames I’d found at the op shop up the road. It was one of the first things I’d done when setting up my new room. I’d even framed the photograph I took of the pinnacle right after the fire, the one I’d taken from right up close when Dad and I had gone up there for a look that last day – the last day I saw him. The day he turned up at home unannounced and said he was moving away.

I don’t know where he’d been staying for that fortnight since the fire, but it wasn’t at home. And I knew that it wasn’t with that woman, either, because Amber told me she’d gone to Queensland to work for a few months. But then Dad came over and told me and Mum that he was going there too, to Queensland, the next day. He asked Mum if he could take me for a drive, and Mum had let him, hadn’t hassled him about anything, not like in the weeks before. Dad and I jumped in the Land Rover and he said, ‘Let’s go and look at the hill.’ We drove up through the bush reserve, ignoring the ‘do not enter’ signs. ‘Don’t tell your mother,’ he said. The trees were stripped totally bare. Everything was black. We stayed on the bitumen where it was safest and took it all the way to the top, to the lookout point next to the pinnacle. We sat on the bonnet of the car and looked at the vista: and at the huge rock, and the devastation all around it. There was nothing left alive.

‘It’s all ruined,’ I said.

Dad took my hand. ‘Don’t worry, honey, it’ll all grow again. Give it time.’

I couldn’t believe he was leaving. I was so angry at him for doing this to us. But it was hard because I also loved him so much. I couldn’t believe I wasn’t going to be living with him anymore. Or seeing him every day. I started to cry.

Dad got down from the bonnet and went around to stand at the back of the car for a moment, and when he came back, his voice was all husky. ‘Got your camera?’

As Stars Fall / Christie Nieman

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‘Yes,’ I said.

‘You should take a picture of it all now, so you can remember the bush like this.

You won’t believe how quickly it all comes back to life.’

Dad left, and a few weeks later, Mum and I left too. Before Dad told us he was going away, Mum had got herself a job in the city at a really good school, and she said that they had a place for me there too. She told me, in that hard way she now had, that it didn’t matter that Dad was the one leaving now, she’d already arranged stuff, and it was too late to change. She said it was an excellent career move for her, and that it would also be a great advantage for me to do my final years of high school there. That everything had worked out well.

Well?! She didn’t even consult me. Within weeks we had packed up, moved our sheep in with the neighbour’s flock, and left Pen-dog and Magpie Mo over at the Dooleys’. And even as we drove away from our house for the city, I could see the blackened hills misting up with the faint green of new life that Dad had promised would come. But we were driving away from it.

I couldn’t see the picture on my wall anymore through the mist in my eyes. It had started to rain softly, surprisingly, and it made a much louder noise than you would expect on the tin roof just inches above my head. I blinked and got off the bed and moved over to the top of the ladder, and from there, away from the sound of the rain, I could hear onions frying. I could smell onions frying. Onionfrying is a great smell. It smells like you’re home, no matter where you are. As I climbed down the ladder I was thinking about how I was going to ask Mum if she’d had a good day at school and if she had any homework and if she’d played nice with all the other teachers. I wasn’t going to be sad. But halfway down the ladder all those jokey thoughts flew away. I could see her, hunched over the stove, stirring mechanically. She had changed out of her stylish school clothes and into a grey t-shirt and tracksuit pants. With the kitchen bright white around her she looked small, and old too, and she looked very, very alone.

Christie Nieman writes fiction and nonfiction and is an award-nominated playwright. Her short fiction features in the recent anthology Just Between Us: Australian writers tell the truth about female friendship, and other stories and essays have appeared in Meanjin, Text, The Big Issue and elsewhere. She lives in Central Victoria and is visited daily by a regular crew of wild birds. As Stars Fall is published

by Pan Macmillan, and is her first novel - christienieman.com

‘THE IMMORTAL MAN THAT CANNOT DIE’ Inga Walton

And these are the gems of the Human Soul, The rubies and pearls of a love-sick eye, The countless gold of the akeing heart, The martyr’s groan and the lover’s sigh. (33-36) - William Blake: The Mental Traveller, c.1803

The National Gallery of Victoria holds, as one of its greatest treasures, a magnificent and highly important collection of watercolours, engravings, books and prints by William Blake (1757-1827), now considered to be one of the greatest figures of the Romantic Age. Many works in this glorious collection are seldom displayed, owing to the light-sensitive nature of the pigments Blake employed. The previous survey, Tyger of Wrath: William Blake in the National Gallery of Victoria (28 April-30 June, 1999), was the final exhibition of prints and drawings in the Robert Raynor Gallery to be held at the St. Kilda Road site before its redevelopment. The present exhibition William Blake (until 31 August, 2014), curated by Cathy Leahy, Senior Curator of Prints and Drawings, is the first in fifteen years and brings together over 100 works from the NGV holdings.

These days, the term ‘visionary’ is as overused as it is usually underserved, particularly as it is applied to figures in the creative and literary fields. However, Blake was indisputably one such individual. Indeed, his sensibility was such that many of his contemporaries thought him profoundly eccentric, bordering on the mentally ill. His idiosyncratic manner, disdain for authority, and willingness to endorse radical social views (such as the abolition of slavery and sexual equality) challenged the conventions of his time. Blake’s family followed a dissenting form of Protestantism and, although deeply religious himself, Blake rejected the hierarchical and rigid structures of the Church of England, as he did orthodoxies of any other kind. This led to Blake being marginalised by the conservative artistic circles of late eighteenth-century London, to the extent that it was often difficult for him to support himself and Catherine Boucher (1762-1831), whom he married in 1782.

PREVIOUS SPREAD: William Blake, The Harlot and the Giant, illustration for The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (Purgatorio XXXII, 85-87 and 142-53) (detail) 1824–27, pen and ink and watercolour over pencil and black chalk, with sponging, 37.2 x 52.7 cm. Felton Bequest, 1920. Courtesy of the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.

William Blake / Inga Walton

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Blake’s body of work embraced esoteric meditations on the nature of God and the state of the soul, and was informed by an expansive personal mythology expressive of deep spiritual conviction. Blake’s work was often baffling to his intended audience, not only because he was prepared to wrestle with moral, political and philosophical quandaries within it, but in doing so he also attempted to conflate the visual and the literary into a single artistic statement.

As David Bindman, Emeritus Professor of Art History at University College, London has observed, “Blake’s distinctive achievement ... derives ultimately from his ability to create a unity out of the potentially fragmentary aspects of his life, by refusing to be confined within the professional compartments of printmaking, painting and poetry. Life, work and art were to be indivisible, united by the idea that all art was a form of prayer. Blake’s passionate sincerity and spiritual ambition were always at war with material circumstances, but he was able to bring an almost superhuman energy and technical ingenuity to his desire to give concrete expression to his visions”.

One of the ways in which Blake tried to defy the limitations imposed by genre was by pioneering a new method of printing for his books of poetry, one he called ‘Illuminated printing’. Blake claimed that the idea was revealed to him in a dream in 1787 by his beloved younger brother Robert, who had died earlier the same year. Describing it as a process ‘which combines the painter and the poet’, Blake’s goal was to successfully place the text and the image (usually printed separately using different processes) on the same plate. Essentially a form of negative etching, Blake’s demanding invention made a copper engraving plate into the equivalent of a woodcut block by printing not from incised lines, but from a raised surface. He drew the images and hand-wrote the text (in reverse) on the plate using acid-resistant liquid, before placing the plate in nitric acid to etch away the exposed parts. This left the composite design standing in relief, enabling it to be printed in one step, and then hand-coloured with watercolour.

Radically different to any process used by commercial engravers or book publishers at the time, Blake believed it would allow a degree of independence from an industry he often had acrimonious dealings with.

Surprisingly perhaps, Blake’s tumultuous career had started in quite a predictable and orderly manner. Recognising his son’s emerging talent, Blake’s father James, a hosier, sent him to the drawing school of Henry Pars (1734-1806), elder brother of the better known artist William Pars (1742-82).

By 1772, Blake was apprenticed to James Basire, the elder (1730-1802), the most significant of the family of engravers. Blake became a student at the prestigious Royal Academy in 1779, but soon grew to detest the views espoused by its first President, Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-92).

William Blake / Inga Walton

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Although Blake submitted works for the Academy salon between 1780 and 1808 it was, at best, an uneasy association. (The Academy would grant Blake a ‘distress payment’ in 1822 to alleviate his financial predicament).

During his first year at the Royal Academy Blake met George Cumberland (1754-1848), who also had an interest in experimental printmaking. The art collector, writer and poet was a pivotal supporter of Blake’s work.

Cumberland’s son (also George) was a pupil of the naturalist painter John Linnell (1792-1882), and it was he who introduced Linnell to Blake in 1818.

Linnell was able to coax Blake out of a retreat into self-imposed isolation that had lasted nearly a decade. He introduced the senior artist to a wider circle of patrons, and to younger artists who admired Blake’s work. Of those, the most significant was a group known as ‘The Ancients’ (or the ‘Shoreham Ancients’) who came together around 1824, and persisted for about a decade. The core members were the artists Samuel Palmer (1805-81), George Richmond (180996), and Edward Calvert (1799-1883) who formed the first English expression

< William Blake, The Creation of Eve, illustration for Paradise Lost by John Milton (VIII, 452-77) 1822, pen and brown and black ink and watercolour over pencil and black chalk, with stippling and sponging, 50.4 x 40.7 cm. Felton Bequest, 1920. Courtesy of the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.

William Blake / Inga Walton

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of the idea of an artistic ‘brotherhood’. Blake met the group in 1825, as they shared his interest in the spiritual, and antipathy towards ‘modern’ trends in art.

Linnell proved a loyal friend, advocate, and a generous patron in Blake’s later years. The first major commission secured by Linnell for Blake was a set of wood engravings for Dr. Robert John Thornton, the Linnell family’s physician, who was about to publish a third edition of his school text The Pastorals of Virgil (1821).

Blake produced seventeen unconventional and highly atmospheric white-line engravings for this, of which the NGV has fourteen. These tiny works did not appeal to Thornton, however, and were only grudgingly included in the volume; the blocks were bought by Linnell in 1825. As well as acquiring an outstanding personal collection of Blake’s work, Linnell directly commissioned Blake to produce engravings for the Book of Job (1823-26), and watercolours for Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy (1824-27). The latter remained unfinished at the time of Blake’s death, with the sheets in varying stages of completion, ranging from pencil sketches with annotations, to fully realised scenes in jewel-like colours.

> William Blake, The Stygian Lake, with the Ireful Sinners fighting, illustration for The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (Inferno VII, 106-26) 1824–27, pen and ink and watercolour over pencil and traces of black chalk with sponging, 52.7 x 37.1 cm. Felton Bequest, 1920. Courtesy of the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.

William Blake / Inga Walton

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When John Linnell’s collection came up for sale at Christie’s in London, 15 March, 1918, the NGV was in the position to acquire a large number of works, owing to the munificence of the Felton Bequest (1904). The journalist, art critic and connoisseur Robert Baldwin ‘Robbie’ Ross (1869-1918), the devoted friend and literary executor of Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), was the Felton Advisor in London at the time. Well-connected in the London art world, Ross had a great interest in Blake’s work, and was ideally placed to negotiate this significant coup on the NGV’s behalf. A number of British institutions also wanted to buy various of the Blake works, particularly the Divine Comedy suite which was consigned as a single lot, but found themselves hampered by a post-war lack of funds.

Fearful of the number of works that could potentially depart British shores for American collections, Charles Aitken (1869-1936), first Director of the Tate Gallery (1917-30), took charge. His bold plan was to mount a consortium bid for the 102 Dante watercolours, with each member selecting drawings to the value of their subscription. The NGV, being considered ‘within the Empire’, was part of the successful bid, and the Dante works were acquired for £7,665 (some £325,800 today). Ross had first pick of the suite on behalf of the NGV and chose thirty-six superb works, the largest group from the series. The rest were divided between the Tate, the British Museum, the Ashmolean Museum (Oxford University), the Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, and two private collectors.

Sadly for the Tate Gallery, some of the subscriptions for its share of the Divine Comedy works failed to eventuate, so further sales from the suite occurred in the 1920s. The American collector Grenville Lindall Winthrop (1864-1943) would eventually acquire twenty-three of the Dante drawings. Winthrop bequeathed his collection to the Fogg Museum (Harvard University), which now has the second-largest group of the Divine Comedy sheets after the NGV. Perhaps reflecting both the dramatic potential of the text, and his own unconventional religious and mystical inclinations, Blake dedicated seventytwo works of his suite to the depiction of Hell, twenty to Purgatory, but only ten to Paradise. The complete set has never been exhibited, but one of the most pleasing and innovative aspects of the current exhibition is how that has been addressed curatorially. All 102 works in the narrative sequence can be viewed thanks to the installation of interactive touch-screens, which aim to convey the extent and power of Blake’s ambitious final endeavour to the viewer.

< William Blake, The Symbolic Figure of the Course of Human History described by Virgil, illustration for The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (Inferno XIV, 94-119) 1824–27, pen and ink and watercolour over pencil, with sponging, 52.7 x 37.3 cm. Felton Bequest, 1920.

Courtesy of the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.

William Blake / Inga Walton

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The NGV made further purchases from the Linnell sale, including two (of three) watercolours Blake produced for Linnell based on John Milton’s Paradise Lost, The Creation of Eve and Satan Watching the Endearments of Adam and Eve (both 1822). The set of twenty-two Book of Job engravings, and three separate prints from Blake’s ‘Prophetic’ books, Plate 8 from Europe: A Prophecy (1794), Plate 21 from The First Book of Urizen (1794), and Plate 51 from Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion (c.1804-c.1820), also made their way to Melbourne. The collection was increased over the intervening years, and substantially enriched in the late 1980s with the acquisition of one of Blake’s earliest illuminated books of his own poetry, Songs Of Innocence (1789), and a copy of the deluxe four-volume edition of the popular meditative poem The Complaint: or, Night-Thoughts on Life, Death, & Immortality (1797) by Edward Young (1683-1765).

The immediacy of Blake’s emotive response to the various texts remains palpable upon viewing the works. As both poet and artist, he seemed to be able to take the imaginative leap into the symbolic and supernatural realm that has eluded many illustrators when dealing with the same material. Nor did Blake comply with any established visual iconography, particularly for Biblical or classical subjects, relying on the written word to conjure responses of psychological depth and great sensitivity. He also entertained a certain irreverence towards the subject-matter. Blake singles out Vanni Fucci di Pistoia, a minor character in Dante’s Inferno (Canto XXIV-XXV), for one of the more humorous moments in his illustrations to the Divine Comedy. Fucci, who refers to himself as ‘the Beast’ when accosted by Dante and Virgil, is a boastful villain mired in the Seventh ditch of the Eighth circle of Hell, And so the thief, when his tirade was through, made figs of both his fists, and raised them high, crying: ‘Up yours, God, these two are for you!’ (XXV, 1-3).

Vanni Fucci ‘making Figs’ against God (1824-27) captures the moment Fucci gives the deity the finger, an impious image which is perfectly expressive of the later line, “In all the holes of Hell, I must concede, I saw no soul towards God so insolent” (XXV, 13-14).

> William Blake, Vanni Fucci ‘making Figs’ against God, illustration for The Divine Comedy

by Dante Alighieri (Inferno XXV, 1-15) 1824–27, pen and ink and watercolour over pencil and traces of black chalk, with sponging, 52.7 x 37.2 cm. Felton Bequest, 1920. Courtesy of the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. NEXT SPREAD: William Blake, Chaucer’s Canterbury Pilgrims 1810, etching and engraving (third of five states), 30.1 x 93.8 cm (image), 35.1 x 95.5 cm (plate), 36.5 x 96.7 cm (sheet), National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (Gift of Mr. R. Haughton-James, 1967).

William Blake / Inga Walton

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The Gallery’s copy of Chaucer’s Canterbury Pilgrims (1810) is one of a small number of lifetime impressions produced of this large engraving, which proved to be a commercial failure. Teaming with activity and amusing gestures, Blake completed the work in the ‘archaic’ style of ‘old masters’ such as Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) and Lucas van Leyden (1494-1533). As Leahy notes, “This [Blake] considered singularly appropriate for Chaucer’s poetry and solely capable of delineating character. Blake believed Chaucer’s characters represented universal types rather than individuals and he depicted them accordingly, synthesising in this engraving an entire work of literature in a single image”.

Blake provided his own commentary on the production of the work, and a perceptive analysis of Chaucer, in his Descriptive Catalogue (1809), which accompanied his poorly attended London exhibition in May that year.

Blake’s dazzling originality and superlative skill as both painter and draughtsman produced transcendent and evocative works of singular beauty.

They contain elements of spiritual longing, and evidence of Blake’s unswerving belief in ‘the Divine Arts of Imagination’ to enlighten, and to provide solace.

Blake’s poetical musings reflect the personal convictions and resolute principles that sprang from a great independence of mind. His scepticism, hatred of dogma, and refusal to conform to many of society’s precepts make the ideas Blake engages with seem very ‘modern’ to us. The writer and critic William Michael Rossetti (1829-1919), a founding member of the PreRaphaelite Brotherhood, believed that Blake was, “a man not forestalled by predecessors, nor to be classed with contemporaries, nor to be replaced by known or readily surmisable successors”. Just as Blake viewed salvation as the work of a lifetime, so did he want to share his wisdom with future generations, as he wrote in Jerusalem,

I give you the end of a golden string, Only wind it into a ball: It will lead you in at Heaven’s gate, Built in Jerusalem’s wall. (f. 77.)

• William Blake, NGV (International), 180 St Kilda Rd, Melbourne (VIC), until 31 August - ngv.vic.gov.au

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august salon

PREVIOUS SPREAD: 1. William BLAKE, Lucifer, illustration for The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (Inferno XXXIV, 10-81) 1824–27, pen and ink and watercolour over pencil and black chalk, 52.7 x 37.2 cm. Felton Bequest, 1920. & 2. William BLAKE, Dante at the Moment of entering the Fire, illustration for The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (Purgatorio XXVII, 46-48) 1824–27, pen and ink and watercolour over black chalk and pencil, with sponging and touches of gum, 52.6 x 36.8 cm. Felton Bequest, 1920. William Blake, NGV (International), 180 St Kilda Rd, Melbourne (VIC), until 31 August - ngv.vic.gov.au THIS SPREAD: 3. VICTORIA REICHELT, Flood, 2014, oil on linen. Reproduced courtesy of the artist and Dianne Tanzer Gallery + Projects, Melbourne. & 4. Prudence FLINT, Toothbrush 2014, oil on linen. Reproduced courtesy of the artist and Australian Galleries, Melbourne. & NEXT SPREAD: Tony ALBERT & Natalya HUGHES, We didn’t ask for your opinion (detail), 2013, synthetic polymer paint on canvas. Reproduced courtesy of the artist and Sullivan + Strumpf Fine Art, Sydney and Milani Gallery, Brisbane. 2014 Geelong contemporary art prize, Geelong Gallery, Little Malop Street, Geelong (VIC), 30 August to 23 November - geelonggallery.org.au

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5. Julie COLLINS & Derek JOHN, Evidence Based Research Round-up 2014, wood, polyurethane, rubber, steel, paint, 350 x 120 x 120 cm. & 6. Frank VELDZE & Suzanne DONISTHORPE, Seat Of Power 2014, mattress wire, 120 x 120 x 140 cm. Installation images by Inga Walton. Artists Emerge @ WTC, World Trade Centre, Atrium Level Gallery, 18-38 Siddeley Street, Melbourne (VIC), until 24 August 2014 - wtcwharf.com.au 6.

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PREVIOUS SPREAD: Alison BENNETT, Shifting Skin - Owl. Image courtesy of the artist. Shifting Skin, Swan Hill Regional Art Gallery, Horseshoe Bend, Swan Hill (VIC), 18 July – 24 August - swanhillart.com THIS SPREAD: 7. Polixeni PAPAPETROU, Melancholia 2014, pigment ink print, 150 x 100 cm. Courtesy of the artist, Stills Gallery, Sydney and Jenkins Johnson Gallery, New York. & 8. BOAT-PEOPLE, documentation of Muffled Protest, Sydney Harbour Bridge, 2010, dimensions variable. Photo: Stephanie Carrick. TarraWarra Biennial 2014: Whisper in My Mask, TarraWarra Museum of Art, 311 Healesville-Yarra Glen Road, Healesville (VIC), 16 August – 16 November 2014 - twma.com.au NEXT SPREAD: 9. Tony ALBERT, Once upon a time…’ 2014, watercolour, gouache, printed book covers, collage, paper, wooden blocks, plastic figurines, vinyl. 27 components, installation (variable): 200 x 300 cm. © Courtesy the artist and Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney. Basil Sellers Art Prize 4, Ian Potter Museum of Art, The University of Melbourne, Swanston Street (between Elgin and Faraday streets), Parkville (VIC), until 26 October - art-museum.unimelb.edu.au 10. Jacqui STOCKDALE, Ramajaara the royal shepherdess, 2014, photograph.

The Quiet Wild, Hawkesbury Regional Gallery, Deerubbin Centre,1st Floor, 300 George Street, Windsor (NSW), until 31 August - hawkesbury.nsw.gov.au

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Stefanie FLAUBERT, Janos KORBAN, Membrane chaise-longue 1999, spiral wound, electro polished stainless steel mesh, 52.0 x 150.0 x 80.0 cm. State Art Collection, Art Gallery of Western Australia. Purchased through the Peter Fogarty Design Fund, Art Gallery of Western Australia Foundation, 2009. Australian Design: ten years of the Peter Fogarty Fund, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth Cultural Centre, Perth (WA), opens 16 August 2014 - artgallery.wa.gov.au

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11. JUAN FORD, Channelling WC Piguenit, startled by a spectacular sunset viewed through a canopy, oil on linen, 51 x 41 cm. 2014 Archibald Prize finalist. Art Gallery of New South Wales, Art Gallery Rd, The Domain, Sydney (NSW), until 28 Sepetember 2014 - artgallery.nsw.gov.au 12. Kate BEYNON, Transfigured Gorgon 2012-13, acrylic and Swarovski crystals on canvas, 40.5cm diameter circular, Courtesy Sutton Gallery, Melbourne. The f Word: Contemporary Feminist Art in Australia, Ararat Regional Art Gallery, Town Hall Ararat (VIC), 28 August â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 12 October 2014 - artgallery.wa.gov.au thefwordaus.wordpress.com

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ACTease

DATELINE: AUGUST 2014

by Courtney Symes

What makes you happy? Eleven weeks ago I gave birth to my second child, and one of the things I missed most during pregnancy was running. I tried to run for as long (and as gently as I could) into my pregnancy, but ultimately gravity won and I had to take a hiatus from one of my favourite activities for a couple of months.

Post-pregnancy, my fitness is improving and I’m enjoying getting back into running. I was running up a steep hill the other day and felt my body working hard to propel myself (along with my baby and his pram) to the top. Despite the burning sensation in my legs and lungs, I took a deep breath and a moment to look around and marvel at the beautiful Brindabella ranges in the distance. At that moment I felt a wave of pure happiness surge through me. Although the run was difficult and I was hurting, I realised that I was really enjoying the challenge of this simple activity.

I have no doubt that artists get the same “buzz” when creating their works as I get from running. I’m sure they also encounter “hills” on their artistic journey, but it is the healthy challenge of ‘getting to the top of the hill’ that spurs them on and results in sensational works, such as those in this month’s exhibitions. >>

Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook, The Class (still) 2005, single-channel video installation.

Courtesy the artist and 100 Tonson Gallery, Bangkok.

At Drill Hall Gallery this month Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook, one of Thailand’s leading contemporary artists, has her latest exhibition, Story tellers of the Town.

This is Rasdjarmrearnsook’s first major solo exhibition to be held in Australia, which includes three decades of her work. The exhibition is comprised of prints and videos that explore themes such as “life and death, history and fate, the tragic limitations and absurd failures of communication, and the reconfigurations of self through a succession of artistic displacements”. “I believe that humans can learn more deeply by encountering misery, or traumatic emotion, over laughter and joy. It is the ‘moment’ that teaches us, more so than contentment does, to learn something either about ourselves, or the problem. That is my concept,” says Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook. Runs until 10 August.

Also at Drill Hall Gallery, Colour Music “looks at connections between visual artists practicing abstraction and music – all things synaesthesia! With a bit of the psychedelic thrown in for good measure,” says exhibition curator, Tony Oates.

The exhibition consists of “Extended forms of painting using light, performance, kinetics and musical collaborations” from Roy de Maistre, Ludwig HirschfeldMack, Jozef Stanislaus Ostoja-Kotkowski, Frank Hinder, Warren Burt, John Aslanidis, Cathy Blanchflower, John Nixon and David Sequeira, among others. Circle 15 August in your diary for the Colour Music “light and sound extravaganza”, run in conjunction with the School of Art. Colour Music runs from 14 August – 28 September - dhg.anu.edu.au NEXT SPREAD: John Aslanidis, Sonic Network no. 13 (detail) 2013, oil and acrylic on canvas, 244 x 304 cm. Courtesy the artist and Gallery 9, Sydney.

ACTease / Courtney Symes

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Abigail Varney, Portrait Series 2013

Samuel Townsend & Abigail Varney present a striking collection of photographs that explore the beauty of young men in their latest exhibition, All the Young Dudes at Belconnen Arts Centre. Townsend and Varney challenge Germaine Greer’s observation that “Society is not accustomed to seeing beauty in young males” (source: The Boy, Germaine Greer, 2003). Works included in the exhibition have been captured over the last decade, and “are meditations on masculinity and its ever-evolving flexibility. Each image contemplates the unique form and physicality of the selected characters as they forge their own ideas of what it is to be male. The dual lens, both male and female, investigates aspects of strength and vulnerability, youth and beauty.” - abigailvarney.com Shibori is a fabric dyeing technique that uses the folding and manipulation of fabric to achieve striking resist-dye results. Synergy — Shibori Down Under at Belconnen Arts Centre offers viewers the unique opportunity to appreciate ACTease / Courtney Symes

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beautiful works from members of the World Shibori Network Australia and New Zealand (WSNANZ). The WSNANZ aims “to support shibori artists in Australia and New Zealand and to educate the public in the art of shibori”. Many of the works featured in this exhibition will also be included in the Ninth International Shibori Symposium in China.

Also at Belconnen Arts Centre, another master of fabric, Anna Sutherland presents a stunning collection of hand-dyed and printed fabrics. Not only does Anna create unique designs on her fabrics, she also demonstrates how her designs can be applied to unique furniture pieces and accessories “with jewellike qualities”. A Printed Space treats viewers to the launch of Sutherland’s new collection, using digitally printed fabric which “has been incorporated into this exhibition showcasing the versatility of the designs which can be further altered to different colour ranges”.

ACTease / Courtney Symes

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< Anna Sutherland, cushion detail, hand-printed cotton and cotton velvet with piping, 2013.

Sutherland describes her latest body of work: “A Printed Space brings life and colour to the interior. The exhibition has been created using decorative items of jewellery as the print design inspiration. I have created two interior settings, one using hand-printed fabrics while the other uses digitally printed fabrics, a new addition to my label, Maddison Jayne. Both settings boast a riot of bold colour and pattern with the intention of adorning the interior space. Other handmade elements of my work such as hand woven braids, dyed velvet and silk are showcased throughout the exhibition on soft furnishings and upholstered furniture to further enhance their unique and decorative qualities.” It is also exciting to learn that this exhibition was awarded to Sutherland by Belconnen Arts Centre as part of the Australian National University, School of Art, Emerging Artist Support Scheme - maddisonjayne.com All Belconnen Arts Centre exhibitions run from 1 – 24 August, with the official opening on Saturday 2 August at 2pm. Meet the Artist sessions will take place at various times on Sunday 10 August - belconnenartscentre.com.au In Craft ACT’s Crucible Showcase, Phoebe Porter presents a unique collection of geometrical bracelets in Unfold. Each piece is designed in conjunction with the other pieces in the collection, reflecting Porter’s evolutionary approach to design as she moves from one piece to the next. The pieces also draw inspiration from the properties of titanium – “the precision, accuracy and method needed to work such a strong metal”.

Also at Craft ACT with her latest exhibition, Metamophosi, Kristel Britcher presents a body of work that “is a celebration of the evolutionary potential of sculptural glassmaking processes; independent structures, developing over generations into new hybrids of form and function, a new murrine aesthetic”.

Through the exploration of traditional Italian glass making techniques (such as murine and cane), Britcher pays “homage to the utilitarian history of glass blowing” through utilitarian pieces “with the idea that these traditional forms have in their own time evolved, with cane and murrine no longer being a pattern to be seen in a glass form but to become a form in itself”. All Craft ACT exhibitions run until 20 August - craftact.org.au

Courtney Symes is a Canberra-based writer, small business owner, and mother. When she’s not writing, you will find her enjoying a run around one of Canberra’s beautiful parks and seeking out Canberra’s best coffee and cheesecake haunts with the family. Read more at alittlepinkbook.blogspot.com.au

DATELINE: AUGUST 2014

by Inga Walton

Liminal_Narratives at Bayside Arts & Cultural Centre (until 31 August) is the fourth exhibition in their annual Midwinter Masters series. In her first major venture after retiring as Deputy Director of the National Gallery of Victoria, Frances Lindsay, AM has brought together the diverse work of eleven artists through which the notion of storytelling and narrative is explored. “[These] works embody ideas and stories projected as narratives, but defined by inherent mystery. That is, while the compelling images of the works suggest ideas about content, the complete story is never fully revealed.

They are submerged, non-linear narratives in which the unusual, the paradoxical, and the ambiguous, pose questions about the nature of things”, Lindsay contends.

> Jane Burton, Morphée (2009), pigment print (ed. 3), 29 x 25 cm.

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One of Australia’s most consistently dynamic and ferocious talents, Gareth Sansom has, in recent years, been the recipient of the John McCaughey Memorial Prize (2008) and the (final) Dobell Prize for Drawing (2012) for his twenty-part suite Made in Wadeye (2012). Sansom’s splendid new triptych, And thus I clothe my naked villainy/With odd old ends stol’n out of holy writ/And seem a saint, when most I play the devil (2013-14), was painted especially for the exhibition after Lindsay approached him last year with the concept for the show and a plan of the hanging space. “Mid-last year, I began thinking about making some triptych works based on [Francis] Bacon’s triptychs – not the style or the look of a Bacon – but more the idea of a contemporary triptych, and the idea of a grand narrative with great drama and nuance,” Sansom remarks.

The ‘grand narrative’ is encapsulated in the title of the work, taken from Act 1, Scene 3 of Richard III (c.1591). It comes at a time of renewed interest in the much-vilified last Plantagenet King, with the formal identification of his remains, and the subsequent Channel 4 documentary Richard III: The King in the Car Park (2013). “[Artist] Steve Cox gave me a book of Shakespeare play quotes,

Melburnin / Inga Walton

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Gareth Sansom, And thus I clothe my naked villainy, With odd old ends stol’n out of Holy Writ, And seem a saint when most I play the devil (2013-14), oil, enamel and pencil on canvas, (triptych) 182 x 169 cm (each). (Collection of the artist).

and in that I was looking for something about ambiguity of behaviour which might link both with the liminal idea, and to the various suggestions in the painting. I was also conscious of the discovery of Richard’s skeleton, which showed that he wasn’t the hunchback [kyphosis] always depicted, and also his wounds from battle, which may indicate that he was braver than mostly thought”, Sansom explains. “Then I realised that the play is almost certainly propaganda, possibly commissioned. I did research all the ideas embedded within the idea of liminality, and I did do some research into Richard III, but none of that peripheral stuff was allowed to intrude into the spontaneity of the painting as it developed and progressed. If there are hints in there that satisfy the idea of the show (spiced with a bit of Richard) then for me that becomes a bonus.”

Sansom’s concerted studio process, developed over the course of almost sixty years of painting, draws on his extensive and highly personal iconography, and functions in an uncontrived, almost stream-of-consciousness manner. “The bottom line is though, I didn’t plan the work or the panels in a literal way at all; I went about the work, chopping and changing over a period of almost six months,

Melburnin / Inga Walton

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with the order being altered and some panels being turned upside-down, until I was close to arriving at a whole that made sense to me as a painting. That is, a series of abstract suggestions, and a series of figurative suggestions … finally gelling to a point when I was satisfied with all the links and juxtapositions; remembering that I began with three white canvasses with no idea whatsoever of how the thing might pan out,” he attests.

Closer inspection of the third panel reveals a cryptic snatch of lyric – “I really fucked it up this time, didn’t I? Didn’t I, my dear?” – from Little Lion Man (2009), the début single by folk quartet Mumford & Sons. “Sometimes when I am painting I listen to FM music and occasionally if a line from a song registers while I am at the canvas with a brush, I write the line down. [It’s] a DADA kind of thing to do actually, but mostly I remove the line after a few days. In this case though I left it, perhaps because I had indeed fucked up the right panel of the triptych over a couple of months before getting it to work!” Sansom admits.

The ephemeral works of New Zealand artist Peter Madden are both captivating in their delicacy, and painstaking in their execution. Much of his source material is derived from back issues of National Geographic, which he harvests for individual paper elements and reassembles into intensely detailed collages and installation works. The sculpture Victory Over Death III (2012) has a pronounced memento mori aspect; two black painted skulls face away from each other, each with a small world globe where the spinal column should be. From this base springs a tangle of dark spiny branches in which tiny birds sit, watching over a small nest of black and white eggs.

After discussing the exhibition further with Lindsay, Madden made the new collage work The Misfits (2013). Here, the aesthetic perfection achieved by studio-era photographers in the still images they produced of major film stars, is grotesquely subverted. A vintage black and white publicity portrait of Clark Gable (1901-60), has been radically altered by superimposing a magazine cutting across his face, that of a partially excavated skull from an archaeological dig. The work alludes to John Huston’s troubled 1961 film, from a screenplay by Arthur Miller, which was Gable’s last. He suffered a heart attack two days after filming concluded and died ten days later, 16 November, 1960, plunging the film world into mourning for ‘The King of Hollywood’. Gable’s life had already been touched by tragedy when his third wife, the actress Carole Lombard (1908-42), was killed, along with her mother Elizabeth Peters and Gable’s press agent Otto Winkler, in a plane crash while returning from a tour selling war bonds. Madden offers a poignant reminder that even those we perceive as the most favoured with beauty, talent, and acclaim are not immune to the ravages of age and circumstances.

Melburnin / Inga Walton

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As seen on the July cover, Tony Garifalakis also utilises found images, of music and film stars, prominent public and media figures, and politicians. He does so in order to engage with notions of power imbalance, collective deference to authority figures, and the potentially corrosive impact of celebrity culture on contemporary society. Ghetto Triumvirate (2014), a triptych created specifically for the exhibition, sees Garifalakis continue his habit of obliterating the subject’s faces with black paint, leaving only the eyes and other small details visible. In doing so, he not only renders largely inert any potential appeal or recognition they might have to the viewer, but also imposes his own act of quasi-censorship.

In light of growing concern in Western countries about extreme face coverings like the niqāb and burqa worn by some Muslim women, Garifalakis applies a painted version of this masking to both sexes.

Photographer Jane Burton also focuses on the face as a site of resonance and transformation. Morphée (2009) shows a woman’s face in repose, perhaps asleep, or even some sort of death mask. Fine tendrils extend over her closed eyes like spider veins or root structures, suggesting an alteration from one state of being to another might be in progress. Slightly behind this passive figure, an echo or reflection of the same face is glimpsed.

Other artists included in the show are Rick Amor, Peter Booth, Richard Lewer, Laith McGregor, Tim McMonagle, and Sonia Payes. “There are allusions and illusions within these complex and intriguing works, but in most instances there is neither a beginning nor an end point. They operate in an interstitial, transitory or liminal realm and viewers must actively engage their own imaginations to determine if the image is pure fantasy, actuality, or a mixture of both,” Lindsay observes. Also look for Andrew McQualter’s site-specific metaphor of the tree (2014) around the doorway areas within the gallery. “It was also a great privilege to work closely with Andrew ... whose wall paintings engage so poetically with the conceptual process of the exhibition project while also addressing the ‘Liminal’ concept”, she says.

Liminal_Narratives, Bayside Arts & Cultural Centre, Brighton Town Hall, cnr. Carpenter & Wilson streets, Brighton (VIC) - bayside.vic.gov.au/thegalleryatbacc

Inga Walton is a writer and arts consultant based in Melbourne who contributes to numerous Australian and international publications. She has submitted copy, of an inceasingly verbose nature, to Trouble since 2008. She is under the impression that readers are not morons with a short attention span, and would like to know lots of things.

Ben Laycock

GREETINGS FROM BEYOND THE PALE

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My parents were potters. Our family car was a Datsun 1000 Ute. It was blue. They said they needed a ute to carry the clay to make the pots, and carry the wood to fire the kiln. They also had four children. We all had to sit in the ute tray along with the clay and wood. Out of pity our parents gave us cushions to sit on. When it rained we sat with our backs to the cabin and pulled the cover up to our little chins. Our view of the world always ran backwards. Maybe that is why I dwell in the past.

It is in this manner that our young family embarks on a grand adventure to Tibooburra in the far North West of New South Wales, deep in the heart of the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;outbackâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. Between Packsaddle and Broken Hill, through the dust and flies, I see my first mirage, a silver sliver of water hovering on the horizon, forever unattainable. I am thirteen years old. It is my first inkling that eyes tell lies.

At Tibooburra we rendezvous with Cliff and Marlene Pugh and their son Dailan, who is my age. The year is 1969. The Pughs have a brand new Toyota Landcruiser and are keen to take it where no white man has been before. I am brought along to keep Dailan company. I wave goodbye to my siblings as they disappear in the distance on their bone-jarring journey back to civilization. We set off in the opposite direction, into the great unknown.

We head South West from Milparinka into the Strezlecki Desert, heading for Lake Frome and Arkaroola in the Flinders Ranges. The track meanders from one remote cattle station to another, often no more than tire tracks in the dust. When we stop to boil the billy we find aboriginal artefacts just lying about in the sand, grinding stones and spearheads, as if the people had just walked off an hour ago. The horizon is a straight line all around that joins itself and makes a perfect circle.

We get lost from time to time, eventually hitting the Dingo fence, the longest man-made structure in the world. We are forced to head perpendicular to our intended destination, til we find a hut on the edge of Lake Frome occupied by a lonely man and his dog. He is the Fence Mender. The red sand dunes pile up and cover the fence on occasion, so he builds the fence higher. Then the wind turns and the fence is now four metres too high. So it goes.

< BoreTrack by Kdliss - Own work.

Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons Greetings From / Ben Laycock

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Then there are the dingoes. Purebred dingoes donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t jump fences, but now they are breeding with wild domestic dogs that will jump a fence one metre high, so the Fence Mender has to go higher again to cope. He told us how the dingoes run down emus out on the salt lake.

Three dogs work in unison, the first one on the right keeping up with the emu, the second on the left hanging back so the emu favours the left and thus ends up running in a big circle.

The third dog trots along on the inside of the circle, saving energy until it takes over from the chaser on the outside, which drops back to the inside of the circle and has a rest. Thus they eventually run down the faster animal with a sophisticated, collaborative operation.

background Uluru dingo by Alberto Otero GarcĂ­a from Barcelona, Spain - Uluru dingo.

Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

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Greetings From / Ben Laycock

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Later, in the middle of nowhere, we come across an old house with broken windows and rusty car bodies strewn about. When we pull up a whole family of rabbitohs come out and stare at us with open mouths. They are straight out of a Russell Drysdale painting; all lanky and bow legged and cross eyed, with felt hats and faded cotton dresses and snotty-nosed kids in bare feet. Once they get talking you canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t shut them up, all ghoulish tales of life beyond the pale; a desperate housewife loses the plot, swallows strychnine, tears off her clothes, runs off into the dark night and curls up in a hollow log to die alone, and suchlike.

Their only contact with the outside world is a truck that comes once a month and takes their freezer full of rabbit carcasses back to the city folks who are hungry for rabbit stew.

For days we can see the Ranges through a purple haze, just peeping over the mirage. They are slow days travelling through grinding sand. Each day the mountains rise a little higher, and become a little sharper, a little brighter. One day we wake to find them towering above us, all lit up like a Christmas tree by the rising sun.

Awesome and magnificent!

Ben Laycock grew up in the country on the outskirts of Melbourne, surrounded by bush. He began drawing the natural world around him from a very early age. He has travelled extensively throughout Australia, seeking to capture the essence of this vast empty land.

In between journeys he lives in a hand-made house in the bush at Barkers Creek in Central Victoria - benlaycock.com.au

background Flinders ranges pastoral land by Peripitus - Own work.

Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons