David Jones, artist and poet (1895-1974) begins his PREFACE TO THE ANATHEMATA :
'I have made a heap of all that I could find.' (1) So wrote Nennius, or whoever composed the introductory matter to Historia Brittonum. He speaks of an 'inward wound' which was caused by the fear that certain things dear to him 'should be like smoke dissipated'. Further, he says, 'not trusting my own learning, which is none at all, but partly from writings and monuments of the ancient inhabitants of Britain, partly from the annals of the Romans and the chronicles of the sacred fathers, Isidore, Hieronymous, Prosper, Eusebius and from the histories of the Scots and Saxons although our enemies . . . I have lispingly put together this . . . about past transactions, that [this material] might not be trodden under foot'. (2)
(1) The actual words are coacervavi omne quod inveni, and occur in Prologue 2 to the Historia. (2) Quoted from the translation of Prologue 1. See The Works of Gildas and Nennius, J.A.Giles, London 1841.
Lecture Topic: POPISM, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 1982
Speaker: Judy Annear
The exhibition POPISM was held at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1982. At 24 years old, recent honours graduate and founder and editor of Art & Text magazine, Paul Taylor was invited to curate an exhibition of contemporary Australian art. The NGV was usually described as ‘the bunker’ with apparently little connection to the local art scene or experimental practice. POPISM came like a bolt from the blue, hard on the heels of the first five issues of Art &Text.
This lecture will discuss the exhibition and the artists (Howard Arkley, David Chesworth, Ian Cox, Juan Davila, Richard Dunn, Paul Fletcher, Maria Kozic, Robert Rooney, Jane Stevenson, The Society for Other Photography, Imants Tillers, Peter Tyndall, Jenny Watson, and Tsk Tsk Tsk), provide some background and context to the ideas and practices, and the evolution of Taylor’s thinking and working. I will trace this through Taylor’s published writings, the various reactions to his activities, and the recollections and interpretations of his peers – then and now.
Judy Annear is an independent researcher and writer based in Victoria on Dja Dja Wurrung land, never ceded, and Honorary (Principal Fellow) School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne. Her fields of research include literary feminisms, and modern and contemporary art practice underpinned by a focus on periods of major technological change. Amongst other projects, she is currently researching Allan Sekula’s first visit to Australia in 1980, as a guest of Working Papers On Photography, Melbourne. Her recent publications include a small book of experimental texts The Ls 2019, as well as contributions to Photomedia Now/Everything is Interesting’ in Art Monthly Australasia October 2018, and an encyclopaedic history, The Photograph and Australia 2015.
ABOUT THE SERIES:
ACCA’s Lecture Series, Defining Moments: Australian Exhibition Histories 1968–1999, will take a deeper look at the moments that have shaped Australian art since 1968. In the second year of this two-year series, seven more guest lecturers will analyse the game changers in Australian art, addressing key contemporary art exhibitions staged over the last three decades of the twentieth century and reflecting on the ways these exhibitions shaped art history and contemporary Australian culture more broadly.
Ambitious, contested, polemical, genre-defining and genre-defying, contemporary art exhibitions have shaped and transformed the cultural landscape, along with our understanding of what constitutes art itself. This program traces the legacies of artists and curators, addresses the critical reception of selected significant projects, and reflects on a wide range of exhibitions and formats; from artist run initiatives to institutions, as well as interventions in public space and remote communities. clickHEREfor 2020 season listings
Jane Sutherland (1853-1928), Obstruction, 1887 Turns out, it was neither a cow (La vache qui rit) nor a bull (Logos). It was, in fact, another young girl, MISS-spelled by a malevolent ha-ha turned split-logos (post and rail), immured in deceptive appearance. A ha-ha (French: hâ-hâ or saut de loup) is a recessed landscape design element that creates a vertical barrier while preserving an uninterrupted view of the landscape beyond.
The design includes a turfed incline that slopes downward to a sharply vertical face (typically a masonry retaining wall). Ha-has are used in landscape design to prevent access to a garden by, for example, grazing livestock without obstructing views. In security design, the element is used to deter vehicular access to a site while minimizing visual obstruction.
The name "ha-ha" is thought to have stemmed from the exclamations of surprise by those coming across them, as the walls were intentionally designed so as not to be visible on the plane of the landscape.[1] Alternatively, it may have been referred to as "ha-hah" as an abreviation of "half and half" with half a wall and half a ditch. Daniel Dering in 1724, John Perceval, 1st Earl of Egmont (father to the prime minister, Spencer Perceval), observed of Stowe: "What adds to the beauty of this garden is, that it is not bounded by walls, but by a ha-hah [sic], which leaves you the sight of the beautiful woody country, and makes you ignorant how far the high planted walks extend."
Elioth Gruner (1882-1939) Landscape : Two Figures at Post and Rail Fence Lot 16 : Shapiro : SH179- Australian and International Art for auction 10 June 2020
Upon the scene arriving, seeking judgement, liberation, Prince Elioth didst deconstructed that spelling rail and so released the trapped girl|s, the one and thus the other, to be and to talk, together, free. Unbounded.
The human brain is divided into two hemispheres – left and right. Scientists continue to explore how some cognitive functions tend to be dominated by one side or the other; that is, how they are lateralised. - Wikipedia
TARists of binary matters and matrix studies continue to observe Re. subject matter regarding object matter
Not so much music of the spheres as resonant matrix, and thereof an orchesTAR of local inflections. A village pick-up band, after Ives and Cage and the Sengai Slave Guitars.
Score of 'The Universe' as performed by Sengai Slave Guitars Musicians of the Matrix click HERE to enlarge above
Life is a 2015 biographical drama film directed by Anton Corbijn and written by Luke Davies. It is based on the friendship of Life photographer Dennis Stock and Hollywood actor James Dean, starring Robert Pattinson as Stock and Dane DeHaan as Dean.
The film is an American, British, German, Canadian and Australian co-production, produced by Iain Canning and Emile Sherman from See-Saw Films and Christina Piovesan from First Generation Films with co-financed by Barry Films Production.Wikipedia
Set in 1955, an important chapter of LIFEis James Dean's return visit to his family's farm in Indiana. He takes with him the photographer Dennis Stock.
Above, heading back to Melbourne, John Brack's The Car (1955) passes Dean and Stock. As does the outgoing TARmobile troupe, below.
Here, we draw (see below) and re-read Part 5 of T S Eliot's The Hollow Men :
V
Here we go round the prickly pear Prickly pear prickly pear Here we go round the prickly pear At five o'clock in the morning. Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow For Thine is the Kingdom Between the conception And the creation Between the emotion And the response Falls the Shadow Life is very long Between the desire And the spasm Between the potency And the existence Between the essence And the descent Falls the Shadow For Thine is the Kingdom For Thine is Life is For Thine is the This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.
. . . .
"Now all I have is a reproduction, and it is not enough. Sometimes it just isn’t. I can’t wait for all this to be over, so I can get out of my paddock and go and see for myself. Like the young girl in Sutherland’s painting—and, needless to say, this is to make it just another in that long line of works of art that are seen somehow to be prophetic of our current plague—I feel obstructed. I feel cowed. I feel covid.
The painting reaches over to me, across the fence separating us. But more than anything, I just want to stand there before her and it and be judged. Have I done right by them? Have I let them out of the paddock?"
four breath masks four carry bags four book cover cloths four paintings of dependent-arising
A Praise to the Four Noble Truths : conceived and gathered in Kathmandu (Nepal) and in Bodhgaya (India) in 1998; realised at ACCA (Melbourne) in 2006 for Juliana Engberg's The Unquiet World.
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Theatre of the Actors of Regard
In India at that time, the air pollution was so bad that many wore the simple cloth masks sold on the street by children. Protection of any sort thought better than none.
Here now in 2020 : - in our COVID-19 pandemic atmosphere - breath protection masks are worn worldwide - as the WHO investigates this coronavirus cause - as scientists attempt to find antidote and cure The Four Noble Truths : - the truth of suffering
- the truth of the cause of suffering
- the truth of the cessation of suffering
- the truth of the path that leads to the cessation of suffering
Instruments of the Passion (continued) Sign of the the Cross Sign of the Guillotine Sign of the Electric Chair Sign of the ... Sign of the Sign Sign of the Void : In this sign, conquer/HA HA
A paperweight is a small solid object heavy enough (usually a glass marble), when placed on top of papers, to keep them from blowing away in a breeze or from moving under the strokes of a painting brush (as with Japanese calligraphy). While any object (like a stone) can serve as a paperweight, decorative paperweights of glass ]or brassor copper : see below ( are produced, either by individual artisans or factories, usually in limited editions, and are collected as works of fine art, some of which are exhibited in museums. First produced in about 1845, particularly in France, such decorative paperweights declined in popularity before undergoing a revival in the mid-twentieth century. - Wikipedia
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paperweight with Yosa Buson haiku collection FIAPCE
