2007 Girl with Hoop
Choreographer Barbara Cuckson inspires a vision to set spontaneous calligraphic forms as a solid part of the world we move through. Ideally the forms would be comprehensible by anyone.
When I was at High School I was enthralled by a teacher reading the ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ by John Keats. She explained that Keats was very sick when he wrote that poem and was taking opium for his pain. I can still see the dancers I imagined then, moving around the ancient urn.
Now on my way home from UTS today I was thinking, as I was walking, about your tiles idea and took photos of all the painted skipping girls on the corrugated iron around Carriage Works. I want to animate them. Then I kept photographing the fence sections with no paintings on them and imagined Rozelle dancers appearing in those spaces.
Now as I write I think of the ‘circumlitoral drawing’ Terra Spiritus by my old art teacher Bea Maddock:
Some people say that the art galleries of today evolved from wide corridors in grand houses of Europe that were made for walking through. For example the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles has glass windows on one side and mirrors on the other, paintings on the ceiling and parquetry patterns on the floor, offering so many things to look at as you walk (nature, art and your own human form).
My grandmother’s house had a space which we called ‘the Gallery’. It was a wide hall with windows on one side overlooking a garden and the wall opposite was covered in paintings (mostly by Tom Roberts and his mates). Here and there were pedestals with sculptures and exotic objects, including a Russian samovar and some carved wood from China.