It is has been over a year of BIG collaboration between the two of us. First flights and treasured maps are writing themselves into our other work and forging unanticipated links, provocations and responses. Lilly posted the below on her Little Boat Tree artist blog today and funnily enough, ran it by me to help land a sentence with my words catching her thinking, like she catches mine. Together we find ourselves increasingly working at the intersection of magazine-making and art-life, and this post is where it collides. It all happens, all at once, all of the time. The opening of the exhibition (and you are invited!) also marks our much anticipated launch into the making of the Treasure Maps edition and we cannot wait to get lost in it. Here the artist dancing, introduces her new body of work:
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It is a while since I have been here, splitting myself between
BIG things and creating a new body of work for a show with
Lisa Rodden I have opening next week at
Art2muse. Splitting is not quite the right word though, it's more of a swinging back and forth, never quite leaving one for the other, always informed by where I have been and where I am attempting to get to. Since beginning a collaboration with dancer
Jo Pollitt over a year ago I have come to see lines on a page as more of a silent visual choreography. A floor pattern tracking longings and failures; map like; incomplete; absolute. My hand responding to a personal lineage of marks and shapes; histories and broken bones. Working this time to a dissonant soundtrack,
Prokofievesque, storytelling the heartbreaks, hopes and missed opportunities of love and partnership. Investigating the losses that come from holding each other too tight, or not enough.
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In this new body of work I explore the nature of relationships and the landscapes that sprawl distances between people. Graphite landing on unspoken conversations, making them visible (like rubbings on autumn leaves), even in their emptiness. The little red stitches holding it all together. Corrections like red crosses on a primary school page. A path; a fence; the fabric of our discontent like spiders webs or fishing nets. The unsaid stories that connect us and betray our need for distance, otherness and solitude.
Interestingly, despite the obvious disappointment in some of my images (no doubt a delayed response to my own heart break) I am now involved in the most intense, supportive, challenging and creative relationship I have encountered. The collaborative work I do with Jo feeds, frames and fuels much else in my life. There is something significant about connecting across a great distance with another human being that defies life's hopelessness and disappointments. In my work I search for marks that are relevant, and scribble stories that might change the way we relate to the world in small ways. I worry about the state of the planet, and especially the plight of children living without fresh water, sunlight and laughter. I am not sure how much of a difference my pages of ink can make, but I am convinced that truly connecting with another human being, and then making something together, is a defiant act with unmetered potential to catalyze change. This new body of work is called Infinite Proximity and with enormous gratitude I dedicate it to my creative partner Jo Pollitt for restoring my hope, distilling my fears, and making me far more brave. Thank you x
You are welcome to join Lisa Rodden and I for launch drinks at 6.30pm Thursday November 10th at Art2muse Gallery 475A New South Head Rd cnr Bellevue rd Double Bay.
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