In the lead-up to my Bundanon residency, organising anything AB (after-Bundanon) was pushed pretty much to one side. That was even going to apply for the Sydney Writer's Festival; I'd gone as far as making sure I put the festival guide safely away for my return, but wasn't going to fine-tooth comb it until this week.
That was until sister Sally pointed out that the opening address was by Jeanette Winterson, at which point we promptly booked tickets (an early birthday present from the sweet thing). Now sadly Sally couldn't make it, something about marking tests to discover just how illiterate
and innumerate our students are these days, so it's best if she's reading this now she doesn't read any further – you didn't miss a thing, I assure you.
Okay, now for the truth of it.
Winterson's address was erudite and inspirational, drawing together so many strands and threads to tie the practice of art into nothing less than the future survival of the planet. Her manner was beguiling and her points clearly illustrated, while the striking turns of phrase
that litter her books, seemingly so effortlessly, followed one after another. So much so, as pointed out by my fellow rapt attendee a little hummingbird you would be busy digesting and trying to file away one salient point and another three gems would go gliding by.
While it would have been an inspiration at any stage, it could not have been better timed in terms of my reflections on art both in general and specifically in terms of my own pursuits since Bundanon.
From her captivating opening: "History is not a suicide note, it's the story of human survival", the gauntlet was thrown down and we were taken on a ride through cosmology, melting ice caps, Marx, cave paintings, Captain Cook's amazement at being unable to entice Indigenous Australians with shiny new things (the population that seemingly wanted for nothing, the adman's worst nightmare), Chomsky and much much more.
Winterson traced the journey through the 'suicidal' 20th century to the first glimmers of hope of a new beginning – the end of the Cold War, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of Thatcher and Reagan – to 9/11 and the sudden return of 14th century notions of evil and the new Crusades. Her aim, it soon dawned, was to tie art back into the centre of all this, to make it make sense at a time when we wonder: surely there are more pressing matters?
The need to return art to the centre of our lives, the centre of our culture, is something Winterson feels passionately. Most artists do, of course, but not many explain it so well, show us why it is more than elite indulgence. For in Australia in particular and no doubt many other parts of the world, the arts are very successfully painted as elite, as indulgent, as detached from 'real life'.
Yet Winterson showed how art belongs at the centre of a life lived to its potential, that it exercises our brain as it is intended to be used. Her discussion of the mind as a closed off, resistant system that abhors change and struggles against the unfamiliar was not
exactly new, but the way she tied in the idea of art as the 'connector', as the conduit to understanding and opening up new potentials was revelatory.
She reminded us of Susan Sontag's own reminder, that we should ask not only what art is about, but what art is.
The idea that art predates history, that it's only through paintings, poems, oral histories passed down to today, that we only know of a history because of art, was followed by the discussion of art as not existing in this history, but always as part of a perpetual present. Hence we don't go and see Shakespeare to learn about Elizabethan England, but about ourselves, our relationships, our struggles.
Winterson made us think about the value of art outside a system that must see everything in terms of its potential to increase wealth, the bottom line that overlooks the cost of reaching it.
What I found very interesting, listening to Winterson with what I guess is my writer's hat (not a label I'm prone to using), was how different I found the message to that in her interview in the Sydney Morning Herald over the weekend. Approaching that with my reader's hat, writer's hat and journalist's hat all struggling for limited head space, I was left a little flat by what had seemed a world view that verged on nihilistic in its casualness about the future of humankind.
While I share similar sentiments about not wanting to get overly excited about this one particular species in the context of the greater universe, fate, design or sheer dumb luck has lobbed me smack bang in the middle of it, and it is something I tend to care about to some extent. Even some of my best friends are human. Hell in a handbasket we may be aheading, but in the meantime I'm still interested in what we can do to avoid hastening the self-extermination process. If the planet needs us to go ahead and do ourselves in all the sooner then fine, but if there's a way to undo some of the damage before we go, I'd quite like to at least explore it a little further.
I took a very different message from last night's address. This gave me a little more respect for Winterson's position on the one hand, but also made me put my journalist hat back on and wonder what happened to have such a disjunct between the direct Winterson experience and the mediated Herald one. In many ways a lot of the content overlapped, but I think the final message was very different. This reminded me, I suppose, about how much the media can steer certain angles, whether by design, ignorance or even by utter accident. Maybe Winterson has
shifted her view since they talked, or maybe...
It's got me thinking about those themes that keeps coming up at the moment in my work and those around me - truth and death. Or perhaps that's just one them, as death is perhaps the ultimate truth. But I've begun to see that there is perhaps far more truth in fiction than ever credited, and far less of it in real life than I've been realising.
The main message I think I will take is the idea that we can have a return to imagination, without infantilisation. The trick , now, is to ensure the creative life is a central part of life and not allowed to be deemed a luxury, a peripheral part of life.
Wednesday, 21 May 2008
Tuesday, 20 May 2008
not so grey
another x-post, to bring the museum back up to speed...
Today marked the seventh day of our Bundanon stay, so why does it feel like we just got here?
I realised upon waking that while I had walked back and forth across the property many a time, had traversed its open fields, dipped a toe in its river, skirted its grand homestead and returned many times to the swallowing bush, I still felt strangely disconnected from the environs.
The visual sweep down from our cottage to the homestead and the river beyond, back up the treed ridge on the far side of the river, allows us to see much of the 300 cleared acres of the working farm. While perched on the very edge of the bush – which makes up the bulk of the 1100 hectare property – the cottage has its back turned to the trees. It’s their presence I feel strongest, but until today it had been a looming feeling rather than a deep awareness. I could hear the birds and had seen plenty of the kangaroos, wombats and even snakes that came and went, but all my time in there had been active; imposing art ideas and projects without spending enough time doing another of the things which I had come here to do – listen, learning, find what inspiration it could impart.
I realised in doing so, I was repeating a lot of the mistakes artists made early in Australian colonial history – their cultural and artistic baggage so heavily laden with British sensibilities that they – quite literally – couldn’t see the forest for the trees. Paintings from that era, pastoral projections onto an untameable bush, build from a palette entirely unsuitable for the subject matter; pastel tones and wan light borrowed straight from a British sky that simply does not exist here. I was reminded of a discussion with a Brazilian photographer who is often criticised because the skies in his photographs are deemed ‘ too blue’ – it seems we cannot conceive what exists outside our own engagement, comprehension and direct experience.
I wasn’t bringing this particular sensibility, but I certainly hadn’t taken the time or set up the mind space for meaningful exchange. I had come with ideas for how to interact and ploughed on with them with barely a moment to see what suggestions it might make.
Feeling it was time to try and move beyond the same mistakes, I took a new route up the ridge to an area of the bush I’d not yet visited. Clearing my mind of potential projects, of photographic or textual possibilities, I was there simply to be. To see, hear, touch and smell, though stopping short of taste. I wanted to hear what the bush had to say, before trying to speak for it.
Selecting a place in a small clearing, beneath a towering silver gum, I lay, considering what I saw and how it compared to D.H Lawrence’s description in Kangaroo:
But the bush, the grey charred bush... It was so phantom-like, so ghostly, with its tall pale trees and many dead trees, like corpses, partly charred by bushfires... And then it was so deathly still. Even the few birds seemed to be swamped in silence. Waiting, waiting – the bush seemed to be hoarily waiting... it was biding its time with a terrible ageless watchfulness, waiting for a far-off end, watching the myriad intruding white men.
Was this accurate? Did it capture something essential about the harsh, unforgiving, unlovable Australian bush? Not from what I could see.
The green of fern of leaf of palm of moss of mottled bark; the countless browns of stripping bark of fallen leaves, their neighbours orange and red. Purple toadstool red berry golden sun silver gum cobalt sky. The white of flowering gums, the black of soil below – the one colour I couldn’t find was grey.
There were ghosts and phantoms aplenty, but these corpses spoke not of death but of life – every corpse-like tree and charred stump was swamped by viridian ferns and proud gums, played host to teeming life.
In place of stillness or silence was a ceaseless treetop chatter, gum tree crowns rustling their rasping dry leaves, while from beneath the soil a sub-aural hum, worms and ants and termites and beetles (not to mention the ubiquitous Bundanon wombats) rumbling about their business.
A passing fly with buzz in trail showed the first sign of life between soil and sky, but was soon joined by the melodious melange that made up even this tiny segment of bush. In the space of a few minutes, my ear slowly attuning to their song, there were chirps, twitters, flute-pitched whistles, twitches, wit-woos, zupzups, vupps, tzetzetzes, zharps and a dozen more songs that leave our alphabet adrift in their sonorous wake – the further from our language and ability to replicate they were, the more indelible their mark.
At first I couldn’t see from where any of these sounds were coming, but a few minutes of lying still and they soon started to emerge, swooping, fluttering and flapping their way across the clearing, from tree to tree and branch to branch, adorned in feathers blue, brown, red, orange, gold and green.
Amidst all of this, thinking once more of this ‘grey’ nothingness, fell a peerless light, a gold and silver gilt; dappled streaks of honeyed tones that seemed a rich and precious gift.
Seven days in, I had finally arrived at Bundanon.
- Benjamin
Today marked the seventh day of our Bundanon stay, so why does it feel like we just got here?
I realised upon waking that while I had walked back and forth across the property many a time, had traversed its open fields, dipped a toe in its river, skirted its grand homestead and returned many times to the swallowing bush, I still felt strangely disconnected from the environs.
The visual sweep down from our cottage to the homestead and the river beyond, back up the treed ridge on the far side of the river, allows us to see much of the 300 cleared acres of the working farm. While perched on the very edge of the bush – which makes up the bulk of the 1100 hectare property – the cottage has its back turned to the trees. It’s their presence I feel strongest, but until today it had been a looming feeling rather than a deep awareness. I could hear the birds and had seen plenty of the kangaroos, wombats and even snakes that came and went, but all my time in there had been active; imposing art ideas and projects without spending enough time doing another of the things which I had come here to do – listen, learning, find what inspiration it could impart.
I realised in doing so, I was repeating a lot of the mistakes artists made early in Australian colonial history – their cultural and artistic baggage so heavily laden with British sensibilities that they – quite literally – couldn’t see the forest for the trees. Paintings from that era, pastoral projections onto an untameable bush, build from a palette entirely unsuitable for the subject matter; pastel tones and wan light borrowed straight from a British sky that simply does not exist here. I was reminded of a discussion with a Brazilian photographer who is often criticised because the skies in his photographs are deemed ‘ too blue’ – it seems we cannot conceive what exists outside our own engagement, comprehension and direct experience.
I wasn’t bringing this particular sensibility, but I certainly hadn’t taken the time or set up the mind space for meaningful exchange. I had come with ideas for how to interact and ploughed on with them with barely a moment to see what suggestions it might make.
Feeling it was time to try and move beyond the same mistakes, I took a new route up the ridge to an area of the bush I’d not yet visited. Clearing my mind of potential projects, of photographic or textual possibilities, I was there simply to be. To see, hear, touch and smell, though stopping short of taste. I wanted to hear what the bush had to say, before trying to speak for it.
Selecting a place in a small clearing, beneath a towering silver gum, I lay, considering what I saw and how it compared to D.H Lawrence’s description in Kangaroo:
But the bush, the grey charred bush... It was so phantom-like, so ghostly, with its tall pale trees and many dead trees, like corpses, partly charred by bushfires... And then it was so deathly still. Even the few birds seemed to be swamped in silence. Waiting, waiting – the bush seemed to be hoarily waiting... it was biding its time with a terrible ageless watchfulness, waiting for a far-off end, watching the myriad intruding white men.
Was this accurate? Did it capture something essential about the harsh, unforgiving, unlovable Australian bush? Not from what I could see.
The green of fern of leaf of palm of moss of mottled bark; the countless browns of stripping bark of fallen leaves, their neighbours orange and red. Purple toadstool red berry golden sun silver gum cobalt sky. The white of flowering gums, the black of soil below – the one colour I couldn’t find was grey.
There were ghosts and phantoms aplenty, but these corpses spoke not of death but of life – every corpse-like tree and charred stump was swamped by viridian ferns and proud gums, played host to teeming life.
In place of stillness or silence was a ceaseless treetop chatter, gum tree crowns rustling their rasping dry leaves, while from beneath the soil a sub-aural hum, worms and ants and termites and beetles (not to mention the ubiquitous Bundanon wombats) rumbling about their business.
A passing fly with buzz in trail showed the first sign of life between soil and sky, but was soon joined by the melodious melange that made up even this tiny segment of bush. In the space of a few minutes, my ear slowly attuning to their song, there were chirps, twitters, flute-pitched whistles, twitches, wit-woos, zupzups, vupps, tzetzetzes, zharps and a dozen more songs that leave our alphabet adrift in their sonorous wake – the further from our language and ability to replicate they were, the more indelible their mark.
At first I couldn’t see from where any of these sounds were coming, but a few minutes of lying still and they soon started to emerge, swooping, fluttering and flapping their way across the clearing, from tree to tree and branch to branch, adorned in feathers blue, brown, red, orange, gold and green.
Amidst all of this, thinking once more of this ‘grey’ nothingness, fell a peerless light, a gold and silver gilt; dappled streaks of honeyed tones that seemed a rich and precious gift.
Seven days in, I had finally arrived at Bundanon.
- Benjamin
Bundanon - Day One
Okay, so the Museum is about to reopen... a little dusty it is too, but seems ripe for a small revamp while the inspiration iron is hot.
I'm first going to cheat a little, and cross-post from over yonder in life between buildings land, as my follow up posts referring to Bundanon may then make a bit more sense.
Might not, too, but we'll see.
So, let's step back to Day One:
Guided safely to our destination by two giant wombats, it was a relief soon after 1am to finally reach the end of the long winding dirt road that passes as the link between Bundanon and the world left behind. With the bottom of the car scraping along the last 20-odd metres, Serena and Julian elected to jump out to see if the lighter load would ease the passage.
Danielle had arrived in the middle of Monday, her 30km bicycle ride from Bomaderry to Bundanon occurring with hardly a hitch (although with three enormous dogs in various pursuit), while Rhiannon had survived the epic journey from Canberra through Kangaroo Valley and down past Cambewarra Lookout a few hours earlier.
Waking up this morning it was exciting to realise that there was essentially nothing we had to do but what we wanted. After cups of tea, some breakfast and coffees, we elected to begin our stay by exploring the vast Bundanon property. Setting out from our 1870s cottage, we passed the cluster of studios presently housing photographers, writers and visual artists, visiting from England and Germany. Some have been here for weeks, with Margaret clearly sad to be heading off in a few days.
A little confusion over which side of the fence we should be on – and a pulse-quickening crash course in the difference between a cow and a bull – and we were soon on the sandy banks of the Shoalhaven River. Peering through the gentle water we saw small schools of fish going about their lessons, with balled up snow-white clouds tumbling overhead. A gentle breeze or jumping fish would occasionally ruffle the water, but it was mostly a clear sheen reflecting back grey-green gums and sandy boulders.
Across the river and perched loftily over an upstream bend loomed the unmistakable figure of Pulpit Rock. Pulpit Rock features in countless Arthur Boyd works and it’s easy to see what drew him to it time after time, what spurred that silent, see-sawing tussle to capture its ever-shifting pinkish orange form. A meander back through the Homestead gardens, fingers teasing smells from well-kept beds of herbs, was followed by a peek through Arthur Boyd’s studio windows before it was time for lunch.
After lunch came the serious business of mapping out our next two weeks. We’ve come to Bundanon for the opportunity it affords for a creative escape from the daily routine. A few familariar chores follow us along of course – the need to eat, tidy and occasionally sleep – but the emphasis is on freeing your mind and creative spirit in an inspirational environment; Arthur’s idea of a living arts centre.
Interaction with the environment is impossible to avoid – like nesting birds we each accumulated various leaves, barks and flowers that caught our eye, along with an all-but spent balloon that must have blown in over the trees and fields, a refugee from the distant clutches of a child’s grasping hand.
We’re all here to collaborate on our artworks, and the question of collaboration and what it involves seems to bring as many definitions as there are contributors to this collective. There is a spectrum of views as to what constitutes a collaborative model of art and the best way to get the most out of our time here. Also interesting is the range of views as to goals and hoped for outcomes – while some prefer to see this as an opportunity to learn more about ‘process’ and the act of creatively working together is an ends in itself, others are drawn more to an ‘outcomes’ based model whereby the success of the project will depend upon the measurable output of creative work and its ongoing appeal.
There’s still much to be worked out along these lines, but the immediate plan is to roll up our sleeves and simply jump into it; to soak up the beautiful environs of Bundanon, to take advantage of the rare opportunity to think and feel without a thousand other things – work, family, friends, Big Brother – vying for our attention.
-Benjamin
I'm first going to cheat a little, and cross-post from over yonder in life between buildings land, as my follow up posts referring to Bundanon may then make a bit more sense.
Might not, too, but we'll see.
So, let's step back to Day One:
Guided safely to our destination by two giant wombats, it was a relief soon after 1am to finally reach the end of the long winding dirt road that passes as the link between Bundanon and the world left behind. With the bottom of the car scraping along the last 20-odd metres, Serena and Julian elected to jump out to see if the lighter load would ease the passage.
Danielle had arrived in the middle of Monday, her 30km bicycle ride from Bomaderry to Bundanon occurring with hardly a hitch (although with three enormous dogs in various pursuit), while Rhiannon had survived the epic journey from Canberra through Kangaroo Valley and down past Cambewarra Lookout a few hours earlier.
Waking up this morning it was exciting to realise that there was essentially nothing we had to do but what we wanted. After cups of tea, some breakfast and coffees, we elected to begin our stay by exploring the vast Bundanon property. Setting out from our 1870s cottage, we passed the cluster of studios presently housing photographers, writers and visual artists, visiting from England and Germany. Some have been here for weeks, with Margaret clearly sad to be heading off in a few days.
A little confusion over which side of the fence we should be on – and a pulse-quickening crash course in the difference between a cow and a bull – and we were soon on the sandy banks of the Shoalhaven River. Peering through the gentle water we saw small schools of fish going about their lessons, with balled up snow-white clouds tumbling overhead. A gentle breeze or jumping fish would occasionally ruffle the water, but it was mostly a clear sheen reflecting back grey-green gums and sandy boulders.
Across the river and perched loftily over an upstream bend loomed the unmistakable figure of Pulpit Rock. Pulpit Rock features in countless Arthur Boyd works and it’s easy to see what drew him to it time after time, what spurred that silent, see-sawing tussle to capture its ever-shifting pinkish orange form. A meander back through the Homestead gardens, fingers teasing smells from well-kept beds of herbs, was followed by a peek through Arthur Boyd’s studio windows before it was time for lunch.
After lunch came the serious business of mapping out our next two weeks. We’ve come to Bundanon for the opportunity it affords for a creative escape from the daily routine. A few familariar chores follow us along of course – the need to eat, tidy and occasionally sleep – but the emphasis is on freeing your mind and creative spirit in an inspirational environment; Arthur’s idea of a living arts centre.
Interaction with the environment is impossible to avoid – like nesting birds we each accumulated various leaves, barks and flowers that caught our eye, along with an all-but spent balloon that must have blown in over the trees and fields, a refugee from the distant clutches of a child’s grasping hand.
We’re all here to collaborate on our artworks, and the question of collaboration and what it involves seems to bring as many definitions as there are contributors to this collective. There is a spectrum of views as to what constitutes a collaborative model of art and the best way to get the most out of our time here. Also interesting is the range of views as to goals and hoped for outcomes – while some prefer to see this as an opportunity to learn more about ‘process’ and the act of creatively working together is an ends in itself, others are drawn more to an ‘outcomes’ based model whereby the success of the project will depend upon the measurable output of creative work and its ongoing appeal.
There’s still much to be worked out along these lines, but the immediate plan is to roll up our sleeves and simply jump into it; to soak up the beautiful environs of Bundanon, to take advantage of the rare opportunity to think and feel without a thousand other things – work, family, friends, Big Brother – vying for our attention.
-Benjamin
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
