freehand (#6)

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freehand: recent Australian drawing
Heide Museum of Modern Art
25 November 2010 - 6 March 2011

breach in the bubble (continued)

One hypothesis for the Big Bang, as I recall, is a massive energy event at the point where parallel universes touch.

You are the lover that I've waited for
The mate that fate had me created for
And every time your lips meet mine
Baby, down and down I go
All around I go, in a spin
Loving the spin that I'm in
Under that old black magic called love

Johnny Mercer
That Old Black Magic

detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something ...

LOGOS/HA HA

freehand (#3)

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freehand: recent Australian drawing
Heide Museum of Modern Art
25 November 2010 - 6 March 2011

Bye to friends at the Bubble & Prick.

Out of that place and into a taxi for Southern Cross station. The driver is listening to music. Body compulsive, it's bhangra. We talk about Bhangra (for dancing) and Qawwali (for trancing: sacred and seated).

Out of the taxi and into the Ballarat train.

Open the catalog for freehand. Domenico De Clario's introductory text focuses on the drawing of breath: drawing breath in, drawing it out. This he deepens by reference to the Bhuddist practice Tonglen:

...and in this sense is not the most splendid drawing of all the one Tibetan Bhuddists term tonglen, the art of breathing in difficulty and breathing out ease?

Also in the catalog, an edited essay by Francis Plagne addresses the Mass Black Implosion series of Marco Fusinato. Below is one of the 10 parts of Mass Black Implosion (Enantiodromia, Jani Christou) shown in freehand.

In the exhibition, curator Linda Michael has positioned this Mass Black Implosion opposite, or in front of, depictions of a man, woman, girl and boy, their gaze turned inward, each holding to a sign of dependent arising.

click upper and lower images to enlarge

Exit train at Ballan, enter car to drive home. Radio on: Mozart, Wind Serenade in E Flat by the Amadeus Winds. And it's raining hard.

By Korweinguboora, in the Wombat Forest, the rain is belting down. An extreme condition that demands concentration. From the radio, Brahms' Violin Sonata No 2 in A somehow seems perfect. As the headlights probe the blackness they illuminate the tracer lines of rain that bullet out in all directions from a single appearing-point directly in front of and somewhat above the now highly focused wheel holder.

Futurist metronomes strain to maintain the vision forward. The car wheels sheet up flares of blinding whiteness. Through a prick point in some bigger bubble, Mass Black Implosion is forcing through > inverts and transforms < into Mass White Explosion.
A tonglen force is drawing in black holes, breathing out radiant matrix.

click image to enlarge

Through the dark forest, the bubble and it's passenger move on.

In the rear view mirror ...

detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something ...

LOGOS/HA HA

Xpotential Increase

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The founder of Sun Unlimited ™
regards the first SunCell unit
-1952-

Robert Smithson
Rocks and mirror square II
-1971-
National Gallery of Australia

And from today's The Australian newspaper ('Nuclear firm opts for solar exposure') this detail of a photograph by Chris Scott.

Michael Goldsworthy refuses to see the solar side as the poor cousin to Silex Systems' nuclear business

detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something ...

LOGOS/HA HA

Picture after picture (Tagore and Brack)

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More Tagore. Another that C has recently read me is Railway Station.

Railway Station

I come to the station morning and evening,
I love to watch the coming and going -
Hubbub of passengers pressing for tickets,
Down-trains boarded, up-trains boarded,
Ebb and flow like an estuarine river.
Some people sitting there ever since morning,
Other people missing their train by a minute.

Day - Night - clanking and rumbling,
Trainloads of people thundering forth.
Changing direction at every moment,
Eastwards, westwards, rapid as storms.

The essence of all these moving pictures
Brings to my mind the image of language,
Forever forming, forever unforming,
Continuous coming, continuous going.
Crowds can fill the stage in an instant -
The guard's flag waves the train's departure
And suddenly everyone disappears somewhere.
The hurry disguises their joys and sorrows,
Masks the pressure of gains and losses

Bho - Bho- blows the whistle,
Ruled by the clock's division of time.
No one can bear to wait for a second,
some get aboard, some stay behind.

Succeeding, failing, boarding or remaining,
- Nothing but picture after picture.
Whatever catches the eye for a moment
- Is erased the next moment after.
A whimsical game, a self-forgetting
- Ever-dissolving sequence -
Each canvas ripped, its shreds discarded
- To pile up along the roadside,
Detritus lifted hither and thither
- By tired hot summer breezes.
'Hold back, hold back,' rings out the clamour
- Of passengers left stranded -
Next thing they have also vanished,
- Chasing, running, wailing.

Clang - Clang - sounds the tocsin,
Time for good-bye, off goes the train.
Passengers leaning out of the windows,
Waving until they are whisked away.

The world is merely the work of a painter,
This is the truth I have accepted -
Not made by a craftsman, beaten and moulded,
Not a thing the hand can grip hold of,
But an insubstantial visual sequence.
Age follows age, never losing momentum,
A stream of forming and passing pictures.
Alone in the midst of the to-ing and fro-ing
I watch the constant flux of the station.

One - brush - the picture is painted,
Another brush blacks it out again.
Who are those coming from one direction?
Who are those floating the other way?

Tagore's Railway Station brings to mind John Brack's Departure and Arrival, and so many other Brack pictures of our coming and going.

Departure and Arrival
John Brack
1980

detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something ...

LOGOS/HA HA

THE WAY THINGS APPEAR : Anne Zahalka

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Speaking of the appearance of things (see previous post), the current exhibition at ARC ONE (Melbourne) is Anne Zahalka's THE WAY THINGS APPEAR.

Click here for exhibition info and images.

click to enlarge

Art Gallery of NSW (1)
2010
Type C Photograph edition of 5 + AP
70 x 48cm

detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something ...

LOGOS/HA HA

Medusa at large : LADY HA HA

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Medusa has long been of interest to the bLOGOS/HA HA team. How could she not be : someone whose appearance turns to stone anyone who looks at her.

Medusa, by Caravaggio, 1595

On a recent visit to Ballarat bL heard of a Medusa-like version of The Fame Monster Lady Gaga on show in a hairdresser's shopfront window. With no mirror at hand, nor mirror-camera for a glimpse, bL left any confirmation of this until another time.

The next opportunity came when accompanying C to Outpatients Oncology. There too, on the Waiting Room wall, another Medusan was already fixing the fear : Lady Cigie.

From Oncology to downtown Ballarat and the latest incarnation of Medusa's frightful apparition: LADY HA HA. She, by another name, whose serpent mane strikes a venom of mind into the first glance of anyone who dares it. (Perseus knew the trick : observe her reflection only. Today therefore my ancient mirror-camera SLR is recommissioned for the purpose.) Those so struck will never know their striker. Fixed thus in the poison of ignorance, they will apprehend only a writhing projection of negative images.

detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something ...

LOGOS/HA HA

p a i n t h i n k [ for J.B. ]

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with pipe palette and paint (Samsara Red)
today's post-painting projectionist
practices
painthink zazen

click image to enlarge

detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something ...

LOGOS/HA HA

Paint Tin as one...

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for John

detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something ...

LOGOS/HA HA

Drawing Lessons from the Book of Sin (1958)

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What should I do next?

click on images to enlarge

Next I must find out my sins

detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something ...

LOGOS/HA HA
(Guardian Angel Looks At My Soul)

detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something ...

LOGOS/HA HA
(Guardian Angel Looks At Lucio Fontana's
Concetto spaziale, La Fine di Dio, 1963)

Lucio Fontana : Spacial Concept, The End of God
click here for further reading about this

detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something ...

LOGOS/HA HA

copyness

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As discussion continues (here) about the Trustees of the AGNSW awarding the Wynne Prize, for "the best landscape painting of Australian scenery in oils or watercolours", to Sam Leach's Proposal for Landscaped Cosmos, his reworking of a 1668 'Dutch' depiction of an 'Italian' moment ...

... here's a timely old favorite from the heap. The original regard of this, hereabouts, a V&A postcard. Verso, it is labelled thus :

Artist copying a European print on to glass.
Watercolour on paper.
China (Canton); about 1790.
34.1 x 41.5.
FE 175
D.107-1898.

Our artist-in-residence editioned a set of these in the mid 1980s.
All hands that will, to the wheel.

detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something ...

LOGOS/HA HA

ECCE HOMO beholdeth WINGED VICTORY

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"The work is notable for its convincing rendering of a pose where violent motion and sudden stillness meet, for its graceful balance ...
is seen as an iconic depiction of triumphant spirit and of the divine momentarily coming face to face with man. The power of the work is enhanced, to many people, by the very fact that the head and arms are missing."

Winged Victory of Samothrace (Wikipedia )

Still Life (2009) by Ron Mueck
@ National Gallery of Victoria (International) until 18 April 2010

detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something ...

LOGOS/HA HA

You

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Giovanni Francesco Caroto
Portrait of a Young Boy holding a Child's Drawing
circa 1515

detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something ...

LOGOS/HA HA

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A day in Melbourne yesterday to catch up on some exhibitions. Stephen Bram (downstairs) and Stieg Persson (upstairs) a great pairing at Anna Schwartz Gallery. Fellow former student of RMIT Media Arts, Sam Smith's grand Synthetics at Arc One Gallery. John Warwicker's FLOATING WORLD: UKIYO-E at The Narrows. The West Space Fun_raiser (7 of the 8 bLotters had already sold) then off to The Shilo Project big she-bang at the Ian Potter Museum.

Between West Space and the Potter, in the last light of day, one street photo. Traditional.

This morning, in an image heap from E of the O, this classic set-up: home territory of LOGOS/HA HA. Thoughts of Las Meninas and the interpretive diagrams of scholars. Starting with

YOU ARE HERE

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A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something . . .

LOGOS/HA HA

West Space Fun_raiser

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The annual West Space Fun_raiser exhibition opens tonight (Benefactors Preview) then continues until 12 December.

Our bLOGOS/HA HA artist-in-residence has contributed to this
an edition of eight Mirror of the World blottings.

1. From the bL blotter heap, select and stamp FIAPCE onto nine 1920s/30s two colour Locust Street "ENVY" prints

RICH GIRL DOG CAR poor boy dog wheels
POKE TONGUE thumb nose ...
PASS WEST pass east .

LOOK AT look at.

( click image to enlarge )

2. stamp the knowing Title once more upon the edgeless Mirror of the World
3. blot this onto verso of the envious regard
4. edition (A/P and 8/8), sign(P.T.) and date (-2009-)
5. price ($100 ea) with thanks to Anna Schwartz Gallery

( click image to enlarge )

detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something . . .

LOGOS/HA HA

West Space
Level 1, 15 - 19 Anthony Street, Melbourne, Vic, 3000, Australia
Exhibition hours: Wed-Fri 12-6pm, Sat 12-5pm
61 3 9328 8712
email : info@westspace.org.au This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
web : http://www.westspace.org.au/

projection-space with crown

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We first looked at this image during Grail Week. ( here )

Not commented upon in that post was the crown-like flourish atop the golden-framed mirror-stand. It's as if the mirror's frame also wears a hat, to echo or endorse the prospective hatted one.

This reminded bL of an old reference friend :
The Supreme Goddess as Void, with projection- space for image.

What's the connection? Not knowing, but surmising : the top section of the silhouette above is reminiscent of the sun and moon disc motif. Could this be the origin and form of the common hat? (In the way, for instance, a Christian bishop's mitre derives from a fish head.) A cosmic crown?

History of the Hat
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projection-space frame
with sun & moon adornment
((((o))))
projection-space frame
with hat adornment

detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something . . .

LOGOS/HA

Original Frame

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Because this post has been held back, I've had this image on screen for the last two weeks. At once full (The Great Openness) and empty (The Great Openness), in that time it has appeared to this projector to fill fuller and flow emptier. Profounder & funnier.

The image accompanied an article by Michaela Boland in The Australian, Family portraits reunited with rescued gilt frames,
31 October 2009. It begins

WHEN John McPhee stumbled across a pair of colonial gilt frames in an antique shop in Inverloch, southeast of Melbourne, he suspected they were valuable.

The then deputy director of the National Gallery of Victoria asked the gallery to buy them, which it did, for $600.

But it took another 12 years and some clever detective work for the frames to be reunited with the portraits they were originally made for. That happened yesterday at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra.

"It is very rare you can put a painting back in its original frame," said McPhee, a curator and art valuer who thought the frames could be attached to paintings at the NGV but never imagined they would be reunited with their original paintings.

( full article here )

Why does bL find this all so profound and funny?

1. National Portrait Gallery/HA HA

2. Original Frame/HA HA

3. Original Face/HA HA

4. LOGOS/HA HA

Cease practice based
On intellectual understanding,
Pursuing words and
Following after speech.
Learn the backward
Step that turns
Your light inward
To illuminate within.
Body and mind of themselves
Will drop away
And your original face will be manifest.

— Dogen

You cannot describe it or draw it,
You cannot praise it enough or perceive it.
No place can be found in which
To put the Original Face;
It will not disappear even
When the universe is destroyed.

— Mumon

Picture Your Original Frame

detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something . . .

LOGOS/HA HA

The Immured

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The heap bought seven glossy 8x10s from an ephemera street stall in Rome in 1988. A stamp on the back of one indicates they are by Berlin photojournalist Joachim G. Jung.

They witness the building of the Berlin Wall.

( click the image to enlarge it )

First, barbed wire. Men with guns, glasses and a camera. A dog.

Each photo has a typed text pasted on the back, presumably by the photographer, to further describe the scene. This is the one on the photo above, dated 28 September 1961.

( click the image to enlarge it )

An officer with a gun. Wreckage, workers, watchers.

( click the image to enlarge it )

A sign points to the unavailable.

Eye level. A boy on a bike gets a better view.

A soldier hides behind a sign of the cross. It is documented elsewhere that mirrors were used to deflect the sun in attempt to blind the cameras of the West.

Immured in Regard
-----------------------
we, through an aperture,
regard the back of a woman
who, through an aperture,
regards the back of a man
(with bayonet and gun)
who, through an aperture,

detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something . . .

LOGOS/HA HA

Vale Sue Ford (1943-2009)

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Such sad news this morning : the death of Sue Ford.

Sue Ford: Self Portrait 1961

As a star, a mirage or a butter lamp,
As an illusion, a dewdrop or a bubble,
As a dream, a flash of lightning or clouds,
All compounded things should be seen like this.

- from Praise to Shakyamuni

Sue loved swimming and being near water.

Through this merit, may all beings attain the omniscient state of enlightenment,
And conquer the enemy of faults and delusion,
May they all be liberated from this ocean of samsara
And from its pounding waves of birth, old age, sickness and death!

- from Praise to Shakyamuni

Sue Ford:Self Portrait 2004

Sue Ford's last exhibition, that I am aware of, was Last Light.
(at Arc One Gallery, Melbourne and Watters Gallery, Sydney)
These are the final paragraphs from Robert McFarlane's review
(Sydney Morning Herald, January 30, 2008).

The pictures in this exhibition also easily transcend an enduring photographic cliche: the coastal sunset. With subtly added colours and people reduced to silhouette, they evoke virtual, imagined tourism, one step removed from reality - creating abstractions of the truth that the writer Norman Mailer, had he applied his wit to photography, might also have named factoids.
In perhaps Ford's most haunting picture, Silhouette 2007, a young woman stands in profile, photographing a scene in which five people swim in a curving bay beneath gently serrated hills that follow the line of the shore. Ford's composition gives the woman's figure enormous scale and mass against the psychedelic colours in the receding landscape.
Ford's achievement in Last Light lies in her ability to create such pictures - pregnant with imagining, rather than literal photographic storytelling. And by reducing the woman's face and body to a black, impenetrable profile, she enforces the absolute privacy of her experience.
( full review here )

Sue Ford: Silhouette 2007

Update :
On Monday 16 November a two hour memorial attended by several hundred friends and family was held at Tara (Buddhist) Institute, Melbourne.

Later, with chai and chat, we looked at photos of Sue, her family, her many friends.

detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something . . .

LOGOS/HA HA