cloak and dagger

I confess to being the worst blogger ever. Sorry. Had a really lovely time in Nowa Nowa, and i'm going back for the Long Now weekend, and the launch of Open For Inspection. Come along if you are in the vicinity. I am excited to see the house, my work was the first to be installed so i can't wait to see what everyone else has been up to.
Here are some photos of what we did in the community room.















Some more photos of my time in Nowa Nowa here.



Photos of the final work will have to wait till after the launch, as it's all top secret till then! Special curtains were made to keep it all under wraps.
Speaking of top secretiveness, i've had some clandestine meetings with these sculptures in Sydney and Canberra.







Well not quite 'cloak and dagger' but it felt a bit that way. One of these encounters was for the Ergas Collection media launch, which was in an amazing old building in Sydney. The sculptures looked as though they just sort of grew out of the floor. It was lovely to see them in that environment. Unfortunately i did not take the good camera so have no decent photos. Photo above is an old one, taken at Silvershot in Melbourne last year.
I hurt my back when putting them back together, which did seem sort of appropriate given their contorted appearance. I was hunched over for a while there too.

on their way!

A few weeks ago I finished some large sculptures for a private commission. They just left my studio today. It has taken me a really long time to get them ready to send to Melbourne. It's not so much the packing that has taken so long (though it did take quite a while) it's fact that there are 21 parts that need to be reassembled into 5 sculptures, with 11 'legs' that don't look that different yet all must go into a specific hole. And i'm not gonna be there to put them back together again. If i was, it would be easy, but making it easy for someone else to put them together - that's hard.




First there's a checklist of the parts. then there's a guide to what all the tags mean (each sculpture has a number, each leg and hole has a letter etc etc.) Then there's instructions for the way that the top part of each individual sculpture attaches to the legs (they are all different). And then there's a guide to the cd of photos i've included. Much more complicated than i'd expected.




The sculptures are called GHOSTS IN MACHINES (DESOLATION ROW 2) and are paper, textiles, wax, wood, wire and other stuff like glue and ink.

Desolation Row part 4

desolation row @ silvershot, originally uploaded by me-jade.

This is a continuation of my previous Desolation Row postings, so it’ll probably make more sense if you read those first…then again maybe not. You’ll have to scroll right down to find them.

The Cinderella of ‘Desolation Row’ seems to be Cinderella before her transformation into glamourous ball-going princess. ‘The only sound that’s left after the ambulances go, is Cinderella sweeping up on desolation row.’ The aftermath of some sort of festivity gone wrong?

And so we are back to the carnival. It seems that originally this referred to a period of excess preceeding the austerity of Lent, which of course preceeds Easter. This seems to link nicely with the suggestions of the hanging being some sort of carnival, with Easter being a celebration of crucifixion.

‘And the good samaritan, he’s dressing,
He’s getting ready for the show,
He’s going to the carnival tonight
On Desolation Row’

Another textile reference. I think my sculptures resemble the leftover, faded paraphernalia from some sort of unknown ritual celebration, or a cast of characters in suspended animation, decaying carnival remnants, petrified puppets.

‘They’ve nailed the curtains,
they’re getting ready for the feast,
the phantom of the opera,
a perfect image of a priest
they’re spoonfeeding Casanova
to get him to feel more assured,
then they’ll kill him with self- confidence
after poisoning him with words’

Nailing the curtains? Crucifixion as theatre? It seems to fit with ‘postcards of the hanging’ And then there’s that play between soft and hard again and, of course another reference to textiles.

My sculptures respond to this through their tortured puppet appearance. I find the ‘hanging as theatre’ idea especially interesting (and a little amusing) when we refer to the act of installing artworks in an exhibition as hanging, ie ‘hanging the show’.

Afraid I think there’ll be more to come on Desolation Row.

desolation row photo

desolation row @ Silvershot, originally uploaded by me-jade.

just an illustration for my last post. This is one of the tallest of my sculptures.

Desolation Row (part 3)

There are quite a few references to textiles within the Desolation Row lyrics; some overt, others implied.

Of course there is the hanging, mentioned in the first line...and you can't have a hanging without some rope...or something like rope...at least not that i'm aware of. Then, a couple of lines down, we find '..the circus is in town, here comes the blind commissioner, one hand tied to the tightrope walker, the other is in his pants':- two there! (and that's if you don't count a circus tent) Perhaps the hanging rope and the tight rope are not so different? It seems to me that Dylan is drawing a subtle analogy here...the hanging is like a circus?

Then there's a verse on cinderella. Now in the story of Cinderella that we all know, Cinderellas ball gown, bestowed by her fairy godmother, is a key part of her transformation. But not so important to the story, of course, as those glass slippers. And of course that is a soft thing (slipper) made into something hard (glass). And i reckon this is an interesting parallel to Ophelias 'iron vest,' mentioned in the song.
I am sure by now you will think i am mad, but i considered it my duty not to make my desolation row sculptures illustrations of the song, and i am always finding what are, to me, strange and interesting connections between things...i suspect everyone has there own.
Anyways, this was kind of relevant to the sculptures because of the way i used textiles and paper, layering them with glue to form something quite hard. Often in my work i am making hard things into soft things, like little fabric stuffed scissors, so this seemed a logical step. And there is an interesting play (in the song) between the forces of authority and restriction, and what we could call poetic or creative realities, for want of any better terms.

Anyways, there'll be more to come on Desolation Row...it is a long song, but it is also a whole world, or three.
And there's plenty more textiles and paper to talk about yet!

Desolation Row (part two)

The arabic bible(new testament)i mentioned in desolation row part one seemed particularly relevant for a few reasons....of course for the biblical references in the song, (though most are old testament, except for the good samaritan...and there are veiled references to crucifixion, well i think so anyway) but also for the sense of displacement. The arabic seemed interesting to me in light of current world events, and for the sense it which the characters in the song are 'outsiders,' perhaps rejected by the mainstream.
In my mind it kind of fit in with the stuff like 'praise be to Neros Neptune, the Titanic sails at dawn......which side are you on?' partly because of the history of the book itself (see part one)and even the line 'painting the passports brown'....connecting to the issue of asylum seekers,(where identity and official papers are all-important) and even stuff like David Hicks in Guantanamo bay (and becoming a British citizen)........so of course we are back to the boats, at least if you can follow my train of thought!

Desolation Row (part one)

The references to the carnival within the song DESOLATION ROW were particularly interesting to me....there is the suggestion that the hanging ('postcards of the hanging')is a kind of carnival. This worked nicely with the appearance of theatrical decay that is often visible in my work.

There is a whole cast of characters that Dylan has 'collaged' together...Romeo, Noah, Cinderella, Casanova, the Hunchback of Notredame, Ophelia, the Good Samaritan and more...most of them literary, or from books anyhow (the biblical references were especially interesting in this way...coming from what is known as the book).

As Dylan says, he 'had to rearrange their faces and give them all another name'. This made my habit of ripping up old books (often they are falling apart)especially appropriate for this work, i thought. There are pages from any books used in my 'desolation row,' the words and pages are layered to form my 'cast of characters.'

Pages from a 'A Century of Ghost Stories'and 'Teach yourself Dutch' seemed particularly appropriate...the ghost stories because the Phantom of the Opera is another character in Desolation Row, and because of the sense in which Desolation Row is itself a kind of ghostworld, partly in this world and partly in the other. And the origin of the word spectre (same origin as spectacle) fits nicely with the carnival thing (more on spectre later!)

'Teach yourself Dutch' was good for the Dutch association with things naval...there are a few references to that kind of thing in the song, and i made parts of the sculptures quite boat-like (a bit more on that later).
Another thing was that phrase 'double dutch'...certain parts of the song refer to a sense of confusion (ie 'right now i can't read too good' and 'you're in the wrong place my friend') and there are also a few references to language itself ('off sniffing drainpipes and reciting the alphabet').

Also, I read somewhere that the Dutch are known as Dutch (by English speakers) because (a long time ago) english speaking people mistook them for German! (ie Deutsch) So this fitted with 'Painting the passports brown,' and of course with the name of the show, ITS PAINTING SO IT MUST BE GERMAN, haha!

Another book i used is a little book in arabic that i picked up a few years ago, when it was thrown out because it was damaged by 'the great flood of wollongong' (you'll see why i like call it that when i tell you about the book, i think!)

Although the book is in Arabic, i managed to find out a suprising ammount about it....it was published by Cambridge university press, originally purchased in Marseilles, France, and that it is a copy of the NEW testament (people seem to find it suprising that it is a new testament...but it's not really, if you think about it). And then somehow it made its way to wollongong uni alumni bookshop...quite a journey.