Passionate purple flowers are subjected to gradual alterations of light as I work at my desk and try to make sense of things.  There are changes in colour and perception, as the desk lamp moves, and as I try to overcome difficult emotions, thoughts and tasks.

                                         

                        shifting                 

                                         

                    light                     

                    purple, green, white 

intensifying and coming to a desirable conclusion.                     

                                         

And then finally there is relief as things do in fact come together, deadlines are met, etc. 

Stills of various views from out the windows of my house.  Looking out for ideas, longing for connection and trying to contain my grief after receiving dire news regarding my dog's health.  

From Spring of 2019

I took these images while waiting for a friend to arrive, and then depart.  Longing for company with and without people. 

These small rocks- that exist in the atmosphere forever- tied to snippets of the short-lived news stories and cultures of today.  

Some of these rocks are souvenirs/memories from the UK, specifically from trips to Margate in Kent and from the banks of the River Cam, Cambridge, while others are from walks in Wimbledon Common.  

Jotted this down while listening to this: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p009mfhs

Sublime & nuanced sound

The attached image shows the stage prior to Pinchgut Opera's performance of Monteverdi's Vespers.  It was a moment of anticipation that I could constantly bask in.  

The Vespers were sublime.  The music, through its rich polyphonic textures and moments of grandeur and quietness, reached a level of devotion that touched my innermost emotions.  The virtuosity of the musicians and their collaboration on stage together was a privilege to witness.  From this experience I can attest that the universal idea of beauty as the goal of art does indeed inspire one's highest spiritual awareness.

Following the concert I was filled with contentment and hope.  I felt more healthy.  

At Walsh St

At Robin Boyd's Walsh Street House, everything seems to float; beams, walls, saucepans, ceilings. All these elements gently touch the structure suspending them in space.  The most obvious example is the undulating ceiling, made of slats of timber floorboards, resting on two steel ropes, suspended from east-west.  The design emphasis is on providing the right space for conversation between guests.  Thus screaming ornamentation, or banal "featurism" is rejected.  The space feels lightweight, effortless and as though every element of the design fits in with complete rationality and reason.  

An Arthur Boyd painting, title unknown

The ceiling at Jimmy Watson's (where we went for lunch afterwards),

also designed by Boyd

At Jimmy Watson's, there were obvious parallels between the two designs.  For example, beams become lights here too.  Also this curved ceiling reminded me of the suspended slatted ceiling at Walsh Street. There is a definite urge to participate in conversation with your guest when seated at Jimmy Watson's and at Walsh St.  Because it's darker and more cavernous than Walsh Street, JW's feels as though its inspiration is drawn from European pubs and taverns, rather than the Japanese inside-outside relation as is palpable at Walsh Street.  

'Living in the city, then, is to occupy a mentality'. Christopher BOLLAS 

I recently came across this quote I noted a few years ago.  I think the note was from when I had just arrived in London and favoured walking around the city as a primary means of transport.  I was in awe of London streets and the ubiquity of interesting buildings that seethe substance and beauty.  It was an act of dreaming, where my gaze would fall upon 'evocative objects', precipitating moments of personal reverie.  

This year I am in my first year of studying architecture and am currently based from the desk in my bedroom for this first semester.  I am not traversing cities as such, but instead engaging with buildings and concepts through lectures, books and the internet.  It's a more intellectual mode of discovery and delight, than an experiential or emotional one.

Re-familiarising myself with the city

I've been back in Melbourne for a few months now.  Before this second wave of COVID-19 and the subsequent lockdown that we've now found ourselves in, I managed to head into the city to look at some of the best buildings.  

John Wardle's design for the new Conservatorium of Music building on Southbank Boulevard is exceptional.  Its oblong shape and protruding flaps and slits in the facade is as though it's allowing the music being practiced, performed and assessed inside to bellow out over the city.  For virtuosity, creativity and intellect to assert itself on the city's mentality. 

The facade is built with this elegant pink and gold flecked terrazzo-like stone combined with these oval shaped pieces of red stone that are meticulously inset in little crevices.  The oval shape of these stone pieces obviously recall music notes and the vast and seemingly random culmination of them all over the facade remind the viewer of the endless possibility of music composition.

A moment with Tilda Swinton

A few months following my encounter with Joanna Hogg described in the previous post, I saw her again at the BFI Southbank introducing her first film Caprice.  Tilda Swinton, who is in this film, and celebrating a current retrospective at the BFI, was present also.  This film was made in 1986 and is quite a direct souvenir of this period, visually and thematically, but also personally for Hogg and Swinton.  They were making underground, experimental films during this period, working collaboratively with like-minds, such as Derek Jarman.  Now they're making films with a similar working process that are more widely-known and distributed, and of course often made on bigger budgets.  

That evening, with an imminent global pandemic-induced lockdown looming, I met Tilda Swinton outside the cinema.  I had in my hands a copy of Jarman's Modern Nature, which I was about to take with me to read on the Tube home.  As she walked down the corridor, and probably sensing my desire to connect, she stopped and said hello to me.  I mentioned that I'm a massive fan of her work and her collaboration with Jarman.  She asked if I'd been to Prospect Cottage yet, and I mentioned that I had a (an ill-fated) train trip booked there for the following week.  Again, I couldn't quite articulate what I wanted to express to her: the influence that her creativity, wisdom, and filmmaking has had on me- the profound sense of kindredness that I gain from her presence on screen... that negates physical distance, different lived experiences.  She asked for my name, repeated it back to me in a thick Scottish accent, said "it was very nice to meet you" before she was off into the night. 

A very poor image taken on my phone of Tilda Swinton & Joanna Hogg introducing their film

Post-film reverie 

It's the period after seeing a film on the big screen that I cherish the most.  Particularly after seeing a Jarman film.  This evening was my first encounter of his work outside of seeing it on my tiny computer screen in my bedroom back in Melbourne.  Tilda Swinton, Sandy Powell, Annie Symons, Simon Fisher Turner and Seamus McGarvey were present to introduce his The Garden as part of the BFI's Swinton retrospective.  They talked about the significance of the current appeal to save his Prospect Cottage.  Being within the presence of these tantalising creative minds fulfilled a dream of mine, but it was the subsequent hour after the film: my walk along the Thames to Butler's Wharf that was particularly memorable.  Inspired by Jarman's practical creativity and his diaristic writing that brimmed with personal meaning and observation, and with the powerful images of The Garden still crystal clear in my mind, I encountered a few things and wrote them down on my phone:

A fox came running down an alley by the Borough Market, slid behind some bins and then came to stand right in front of me. He had fierce brown eyes that were begging for food. Then he ran off into the market probably to graze for fish off-cuts.   

The sound of jogging footsteps, people walking over steel bridges, party boats along the Thames, laughing boyfriends and girlfriends, the sound of a man sifting through sand on the banks of the Thames, looking for historic pottery, groups of teenagers sitting around drinking and arguing with each other. 

I cut through an underpass at Blackfriars Station.  On the tiled walls are black and white mosaics depicting the construction of the nearby bridges over the Thames, and the industrial activities that took place along this stretch of the river.  I stand there looking at them, with the sounds associated with a modern city forming part of the atmosphere.  I cast my mind back to the 1700s.  Standing in the present, dreaming of the past.  

I cross the road to avoid a group of drunk football player-like men loitering outside a pub. Looking as though they're searching for the next (most likely) queer person to point and laugh at.  

Tilda Swinton, Sandy Powell, Simon Fisher Turner & Seamus McGarvey

introducing The Garden

L’istesso tempo

At the Bate Collection of Musical Instruments in Oxford, my tour guide and good friend, Nick, took me to see the original prototype of his own harpsichord model (1st image).  

The museum contains a large collection of instruments, mostly keyboard instruments, strewn around for musicians to practice on.  When we asked at the reception where the specific type of Nick's harpsichord (thought to possibly be Handel's personal instrument) was located, we were directed to the back of the museum where there was a gentleman playing soft Baroque music.  We got chatting to the musician and sat to watch him rehearse.  I learnt a lot about this instrument from Nick and from the harpsichordist... and also from listening out for all the details that Nick had mentioned that are specific to this type of model.  The chance encounter with the musician and the sheer amount of harpsichords in the museum, all with vague histories and provenances, made me think deeply about time and presence.  All of these harpsichords had been played at some point over the last few hundred years... they have been touched by many fingers and emanated a beautiful sound.

 

Nick's harpsichord in Oxford

The many open doors of Cambridge

My visit to the colleges consisted mostly of walking through any open door that I came across as there was a fierce wind and I wanted to get out of it.  This led, of course, to many nice surprises.  Many silent hallways and highly decorative college chapels to be found through these doors.  Then there's the fireplace at Kettle's Yard Housemuseum.  A really special place. 

I finished the day at the King's College Chapel with an organ recital of music by Hollins, Vierne and Leighton.   It was fairly recent music that traversed different heights and ranges.   The fierce wind continued to thrash itself against the windows and walls of the chapel.  It became a competition between the assertion of the wind and the bellow of the organ as to what sound could occupy the architecture of the chapel. 

The Souvenir 

Joanna Hogg's The Souvenir is one of my favourite films.  Following my first viewing of the film at last year's MIFF in August, I was very lucky to have met Hogg at the end of last year in London.  It was a brief encounter at the end of a Q&A.  My nerves prevented me from succinctly conveying to her what the film meant to me, so I hope these rambling thoughts below can make up for that.

This evening I watched the film with my Aunt Janet on the TV at home.  After the film we had a long and passionate debate about it.  Janet found the film ultimately unsatisfying and disengaged.  This was, she argued, in part due to the lack of weight and importance Hogg gives to language.  Janet found that this suppressed the potential layers of the protagonists' psychology and complexity.

I'm not naturally drawn to the power of language, particularly in film.  In the case of Hogg's film, it is the emphasis given to the silences and ambiguities in between spoken communication; what isn't said, which drives the film and compels me as the viewer.  I argued that the medium of film is less indebted to language and speech than the theatre is, where the performer is conscious of their audience's presence.  In the case of experiencing film, I personally find it's more about the witnessing of authentic human behaviour and the acute visual language and technical skill of the filmmaker and how cogently these mesh together.  I think that the utilising of a semi-improvisational technique, with non-actors in the case of The Souvenir, creates a separate and distinct psychological complexity in the absence of language.  As such the experience of viewing the film is one that is filled with questions and self reflection with no specific answers fed back.

I was really pleased to see The Souvenir for the first time at the grand Capitol Theatre in the city.  I went to the screening with my Mum, who had a very different intuitive response to the film than her sister, my Aunt, had.  My Mum is a more visual and nostalgic person and is easily swayed by artistic works that speak to her own experience.  Mum understood and connected to Hogg's Julie and understood the influence and liberation of the setting of 1980s London (having lived there at that time as a twenty year old).  I also have a very similar relationship with my Mum as Julie and her mother Rosalind have in the film.  Janet is a frequent reader and gains much pleasure from fiction created by words.  I gather that perhaps this inclination influenced her opinion of the film and her frustration with its grappling of language.  It's difficult to have the same expectations of viewing a film as being immersed in a literary work.  

On another note, it must also be mentioned that it felt right seeing the film with 400 other cinephiles in Walter Burley-Griffin's 1920s designed (and recently refurbished) cinema.  Its flamboyant art deco style and respectful refurbishment seemed to architecturally complement Hogg's treatment of timelessness and her reinterpretation of the past.

In the cinema foyer, post-Q&A, my brief interaction with Hogg consisted of me repeatedly saying "it's a fantastic, fantastic film" over and over again.  I did mention that I first saw the film with my Mum, and that that was a special experience as the film felt like it really spoke to the particular relationship I have with her.  We also went on to discuss 1980s London as I'd mentioned I had recently arrived here.  She mentioned that the London depicted in her film is one that has now gone out with the tide of time.

A still from The Souvenir which exemplifies Hogg's treatment of space:
one space as the sole location of the film & the container of memory and emotion experienced
over a specific point in one's life... much alike Chantal Akerman's work.  Through the focus 
on one space, the viewer cements the space's dynamic in their own memory. 

These are images I took of Jean Cocteau's 1960 mural depicting The Annunciation, The Assumption, and the Crucifixion of Christ.  

The mural can be seen in a little cavern in a rather strange and unassuming French Roman-Catholic church off a busy street in Soho. On a Wednesday lunchtime there were people sleeping everywhere across the pews and floor. Having a midday rest, and snoring pretty loudly too, which echoed through the church. Being surrounded by sleep and snoring contributed to my dreamlike encounter with Cocteau's unexpected mural. I have never encountered figures as engaging as Cocteau's in a church before. Cocteau mentioned that the process of painting the mural "has drawn me into another world". His self portrait can be seen on the lower centre in the first image, looking pensive toward the viewer and away from The Crucifixion scene.

The scarf that my Mum knitted for me, using wool that we chose together back in Melbourne, arrived in London by post the other day (refer to this blog post from last September).  I wore it on a trip out to Canterbury today.  Here it is on the table on the high-speed train there.

The 2019 Summer Bushfires felt from a distance

 

I feel utterly useless reading the news coverage on the bushfires raging through NSW and Western Victoria from here in London. Earlier in the year I took a trip along the South Coast of NSW, where the fires are currently burning, to spend some time with a photographer friend. I had made my way way up there alone on a VLine bus that drove along a continuously windy road. The road cut through tall gums and eventually opened up to the divine coast. I remember the town centres and the trees and the beautiful untouched beaches that we'd walk down to swim at everyday.

On our last day on the coast we had lunch sitting under an oak tree in the town centre of Cobargo before we headed home. It was a perfectly clear day and the hills were green on the drive in to town. I've seen pictures of the now fire ravished Cobargo town centre. It's an incredibly strange and inarticulate feeling seeing somewhere familiar in a state of crisis. It's even more strange being on the other side of the world where the climate is consistently cold and damp at this time of year.

For this last post of the year I've attached an image of a print by my neighbour back in Melbourne, Ros Atkins.

Guardian, 2001, Rosalind Atkins

Culinary Christmas memory

For Christmas lunch Janet and I cooked a whole Sea Bass that we got at the market the other day and we had it with roast winter vegetables. I worked on and improvised a salad of scallops, lettuce, fennel, little radishes, avocado and blood orange. Mid way through cooking the scallops on the stove- and at the crucial point- the stove turned itself off and we couldn't work out a way of turning it back on. All hell let loose as we frantically flipped through manuals and angrily slammed kitchen drawers. Was a refreshing and delicious salad in the end nonetheless.

We had a quince crumble dessert too, so all was very seasonal to winter. My first cold Christmas as well.

Autumn to winter

Winter begins in a week here. It's definitely feeling winterish. I still see cars driving around the streets with autumn leaves stuck to the bonnet. 

Post-Dorsky viewing 

I've been thinking about the textures of plants, and of natural light hitting plants in various ways after having the privilege of viewing all six films in Nathaniel Dorsky's Arboretum Cycle. These films, as Dorsky has described them, are plants in themselves, filled with light. 

These pictures I've taken here can in no way be associated with the intense poetry of Dorsky's work.  Instead they're evidence that, after seeing the films, I have been inspired to see light in new and different ways. 

The first few pictures were taken in rare afternoon light in Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, that made everything glow for a brief window of time:

Arboretum Cycle

Arboretum Cycle