In An Attic of Her Soul

In an attic of her soul
retreated
walls growing close with encroaching gloom
outside clouds blacken low with late twilight hue
shadowed eyes of a mother gaze outward
left behind
inside
while life outside marched on
with passions external
cradling with a stiff arm
the child looking upon with hungry gaze
while she searches and searches and searches
forever waiting
with mannequin's gaze
for signs and signals
of where her love has gone

In An Attic of Her Soul ... a work intended for the 2 Tens & A Tomato show with Marina but didn't make the shortlist ... for this show anyways ... the next one definitely :-)


Seaside Pull

standing on land's edge

water draining back to sea

feet sink deeper still

 

Spent a couple of days with the kids at the south coast this weekend. When I say south coast I mean the south coast of New South Wales ... the Sapphire Coast if you listen to the tourism bods. Canberra you see is a landlocked capital and about 2 hours drive from the coast ... not very far ... and a pleasant drive too. It just seems a long way when you're in Canberra but not very far at all when you're standing with your feet in the waves. It was cold by the way ... it being winter down this way and the water temperature is around 14-15°C ... a bit too cold for swimming but vibrant on the toes! The water was beautifully clear.

These pictures were taken with my phone as I stood watching the kids muck about in the sand and rockpools. I adore that feeling as the water drains from it's sigh up the beach and sluices sandily past your feet ... and ... if you wriggle your feet ... you sink a little ... somehow becoming more fixed to a point within an environment ever-changing ... it's the kind of juxtaposition that does something for me - it really does. A little seaside pull :-)


In Your Eyes

 

In your eyes
I see the world anew

feel an unconditional love
see the joy in life
and the small things that matter

the beauty
of mud between my toes
of creating something new

the tears
at the injustice of the world
of frustration when it just didn't work out

When you look at me I see myself in you
see the love returned
I feel you there
feel you working me out
you see the mixed emotions in my eyes
the love for you

In your eyes
I see your life stretch out to horizons I cannot imagine
things I will never see
... I see my own mortality then
as I felt when you were born
I knew then my days were numbered by you

Acutely
Aware

My life is yours
forever

(22 January 2014)

 A poem I wrote for my children and featured in Two Tens & A Tomato

 

 


Postcards from a Show

For someone who hasn't exhibited work publicly for a couple of years I'm really quite in the thick of it now. I find myself in the position of having not one but two shows running concurrently and they both represent different aspects of my artistic endeavours.

The first show, Zoologica, is running at the Kaori Gallery until 2nd August and the second show, 2 Tens & A Tomato, a collaborative joint exhibition with visual artist and poet Marina, is at the Front Gallery until 28th July.

When approached by the Front Gallery in June about a sudden vacancy in their gallery calendar I was at first hesitant ... I was in the thick of organising Zoologica and didn't want two photographic exhibitions running concurrently ... but when Marina and I spoke about the potential of a joint show combining our poetry, writings, imagery and imaginations we decided to pitch our ideas to The Front ... and they said 'yes'. That was about three weeks before the show was due to to open and at that stage we had no completed ideas not to mention any completed collaborative works to put on show.

The show contains 20 works including clay sulpture, images and words, installations, mirror-books and photography. One thing we both realised as we brought the work into being for this show is that we had far too much and indeed have enough material for another two thematic shows at least! We have been busy!

The installation Carousel, featuring suspended words bent into fencing wire so that their shadows play against the wall and surrounded by photos of those very wiry words draped around the necks of the City's antique (and still operating!) carousel and blue velvet with blue lighting forming a small stage ... it turned out beautifully ... the words, by Marina, run as follows;

A broken carousel
My life
A dead Burst
of sound and colour
Staring blankly
at one another
We ask
With rusting words
why the ride
never begun

We are deeply indebted to my good friend Alex (and his son Tristan) for assisting us with the installation of Carousel along with a number of the other works through his unique solutions to our hanging requirements (and above-all by remaining calm!). I'm including a number of pictures I snapped with my phone (when I remembered to) whilst setting up the show.

In addition, Marina and I are guests at this month's Canberra Poetry Slam where we will be reading works from the exhibition. This is happening on Friday night at The Front in the bar adjacent to the gallery space.

It's all go! I'll be in to document the show later this week and will post about that separately :-)


2 Tens & A Tomato

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Hi, just a quick note to let you know about a new collaborative show of fresh art and words from myself and visual artist and poet Marina. We have mixed poetry, photography, sculpture and installation into works exploring the written word and visualisations of poetic elements. The show will opened by PS Cottier, renowned poet and local.

The show is titled '2 Tens & A Tomato' and opens this Thursday evening at 7pm at the Front Gallery in Wattle Street, Lyneham ... be great to see you there and show off the works personally ... plus the gallery's attached to a pub and there's a band on too ... art, alcohol, live music and interesting people ... sounds like fun.

In addition, Marina and I will be guests of the July Canberra Poetry Slam the following Friday 25th July where we'll be reading works featured in the show.

The details in point form...

  • What2 Tens & A Tomato - Fresh art and words from Geoffrey Dunn & Marina
  • WhereThe Front Gallery - Wattle Street, Lyneham - 17th-28th July 2014
  • Opening: 7pm Thursday 17th July by PS Cottier ... that's like this Thursday ... yeah we know :-)
  • Poetry Slam Readings: Friday 25th July - 8pm

ps ... my solo show Zoologica is still running at the Kaori Gallery until 2nd August ... it's all go at the moment! G :-)


Words await an eye's caress

letters strewn with love
words await an eye's caress
as breath brings forth life

A haiku for today.

Image is one of a series I created in 2011 to document the hand-crafted books of Fran Ifould. This particular book was titled Enviroroulette and you can view the complete series here.


Blackstar

After a long silent time
With a friendly peck on the cheek
She was off to the ocean with it's crystal blues and sunsparkl'd azures

He cleaned up after she left
The glasses and tobacco
plates and sheets
papers and her hair
Draped on pillows
creating casual arcs on the tiles
debris on the shore as after a rough sea

Emerging into sunshine
hot and beating
to return to the bench
with a cordial
and a smoke
the litter of butts surrounding
testimony to the time spent there last night
and one...
the first one

the one when she first arrived
happy and expectant
hair cut and straight
new skirt 
and totally gorgeous
with lipstick

a touch remained on the single butt
the first one she kissed
before the blackstar
emerged later from behind the moon
and played it's game of scramble
and miscommunication
and churned joy into turgid silence 
and distance

The first one
with lipstick

he cried then
when his eye caught it
hot tears of hurt and love
for their fragile hearts
each now cracked
and from where?
How?
He dare not seek a why and be forever searching
for something he would never find
for the blackstar 
in wicked interferences conspires never to reveal

It has it's methods own
The blackstar
honed on our fears
with twisting happen-stance and evil synchronicities
bent on undoing the fine tapestries
of our lives and dreams
Plans? Pfft! She told me once
[and not very long ago!]
She had met the blackstar before and is no stranger to it
Perhaps she called it something else
We've all known it
sometime
somewhere
with someone we love

Begone!
Enough of the blackstar!
Just fuck off back to wherever you came from.
[He uttered it forcefully enough to cause a magpie to tilt and peer]
[OK it wasn't quite screamed but it had intent!]

In the heat of the sun
breeze hot and crisp 
it left him alone
and he was
alone

alone.

He thought of her then
driving down the mountain
Her hair fragranc'd with his shampoo
The road a focus 
for the singular cogency that road tripping delivers
angling to arrive 
at land's edge
the coast
and the promised purity of the ocean's kiss
the refreshing salty cleansing
and momentary exhilaration
of the heart
only the sea's immersive embrace
as only the ocean can
and will
when nothing else works...

Swim strong my love.

[8 February 2014]


The Fountain

Shortly after
In a musky twilight space
when they are spent
and the breeze takes their sweat
in cool inhalations
He listens to her breath grow long and slow
and lies there quite awake

In this head of his
in amongst the crowded visions
and vivid tangents
the textures and tutorials
the voices and aching cries

There is a space
centred but not quite central
where it is quiet
in a circle of olive cobblestones
there's a fountain
its waters the source of his tears
its sound his deep chuckles
its sparkling clarity his love

The air is warm and humid
and in the dusk beyond fountain's light
a garden overgrown beyond it's humble plan
with arch and arbour
paths and bramble
Wild patches riotous with colour blooming where her light has shone

and in that dusky darkness
with its slow breathing rhythms
he reaches out
and together with her sleepy interlocking fingers
takes her hand in his

(December 2013)


A Little Piece of Me

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A Little Piece of Me

Dark

I feel it's pull

tangible as a kiss never realised

Cold

the space between

whirling sheets of colour

Light

a piercing clarity

precision at a price

Warmth

strangely within

Life

unfurling

a fern glowing against shadow

(August 2013)

 

 


In Review - Elisha Bones

In Review - Elisha Bones at the White Eagle Polish Club 16th August 2013

With Tully On Tully, Borneo with live art by Houl / Walrus / Micha

Oh Crowds.

It's 10:15 by the time I arrive ... I'm either late ... or arriving at the perfect time ... tonight I'm both ...

It's busy! There's a veritable hipster torrent coming through the door and I work my through the crowd to the front right of the stage to get a look at the band ... it's Tully on Tully up from Melbourne.

... it's toward the end of  their set (I was late) and Blue ... bathed in cyan ... driving forth with passion if not precision  Tully on Tully are powering along in alt.rock anthemic style. They have groove and melody and a gyrating lead who shimmies and struts her way back and forth along the stage and whips at the crowd ... who stand quite impassive. If a rocky headland had actual will to rebuff the incessant wave ... the scene would play like this. Sure, there's a whoop at the end of songs and some polite clapping but they do - not - move! In fact they show nothing to suggest that the band playing (and playing well! Well, OK maybe they need to work on their changes a bit…) not a few meters hence affects them in any way. Quite a few are checking their phones and I feel that while they are present in body their minds are elsewhere ... clouded perhaps?

Sometimes it's not the bands but the crowd that interest me and this one is interesting, exhibiting a coarse granularity expressed in small clusters. There's an interconnectedness ... these folks know each other but I'm thinking not well in real life. A sub-cluster has gathered around a large mural being created by artists Houl, Micha and Walrus ... a man clad in a wolf's pelt is taking form over a snow white mane. I find myself coming over all poetic

Gnarled
As a tree it's twisted roots worked with spirals
He looms above her adorned in fresh slain Canus ... the pelt now working ajar
She was attracted by his dead eyes ... recently Wolf's
their promised abyss
his hands soft as fur with hint of polished claw
now revealed to a hideous protruding boniness that hovers over her chest
A snow white mane overflows and frames
her hammock at once a spiralling hypnosis and cutlass both
arms upstretched in supplication
patterned with clumsy tattoos from a different life
the well-meaning incantations a nursery rhyme now
as the roots below darken to a Mesmer’s curtain

It's a work in progress, Tully has finished and so I head back to the bar

The crowd ... there's a retro-chic op-shop style about them too ... a young Liz Taylor glides past in a faux-Roman pleated blouse, nose-ring shining aboard an aquiline nose,, a waist-coated gent sporting sixties spectacles and neatly trimmed facial growth stands out not at all ... nor do the grey suede buckled and heeled ankle boots ... in fact they're each repeated again and again ... I feel like they've all just watched Thrift Shop and found Vinnies yet they’re all slink but no dance ... I'm thinking a public service grad cohort and I'm feeling poetic again ... it happens;

Standing toward the bar her dark bob sliding into a faded pink tee
Slender with a white swan across her chest
Pleated short skirt
Over black tights,
light olive and cream check
tonight proudly aired
still bearing her cupboard's kiss

I resist the urge to mention the wardrobe-creased skirt to the girl, buy a beer instead and head back inside. The crowd's still there ... for a brief moment I thought them into a dream  ... but no, they're still here as Elisha Bones take the stage. The band is confident and precise. Rolling thunder as before an approaching storm emerging in a fresh rainblast of driving dance-core and throbbing beat ... it's a great opening number but does the crowd move? No it doesn't! Fuck me what does it take to move these people? I dabble in generalisations ... I ponder whether their only experience of live music is a flat screen of youtube coz that's how they're reacting. Again, they whoop between tracks but during they're largely (e)motionless ... the music providing soundtrack to a social media experience. The band, energetic, complex and driving with guts and spirit is reduced to so much blue wallpaper.

Meanwhile the mural, created directly on large sheets of adjacent congruent ply, progresses;

Grain as ectoplasm
a tree peeled - the medium
The Knots
Linear like life itself
Emanate brown from the earth, passing through festy spiralled roots
Dallying awhile in her now arched torso before escaping her belly
and
slipping through the fingers of his searching hand
make their aetheric ascent
Roots become feathers
she is watched over by a discarded hawk
(or a militant finch)
I cannot tell

 

There's a moment in Elisha Bones’ set when they're channelling Jeff Buckley ... fucking Jeff Buckley ... I quite liked them up until then ... but then I grew up in a time when Buckley was a CD that went on at every party ... at least then you could go outside for a smoke or walk up to the stereo and physically remove it ... he doesn't do it for me ... he never has ... I've tried. Buckley aside ... Elisha Bones are a polished and well-grooved music machine who performed wonderfully despite tonight’s less-than-interactive crowd who do give it up for a deserved encore as though their phones have told them 'now is the time'.

I’m still there for the packup and curtain-folding dance and meet the lads from Borneo (Sydney) … the first band who played tonight while I was off elsewhere … I apologise for not being there to review their gig and they give me a copy of their EP ‘Is This A Demo?’ to review instead J

At first listen, it’s rich and jangly and the opening track contains changes that bring a remembered smile to my face for their abruptness and nerve … I’d be interested to see them rip it up on stage … next time boys :-)

A strange night but nonetheless a rich and enjoyable one. Thanks Nigel & Beth and the CMC. Wallpaper wrangled by Dave Howe.

Links:


...flying before the storm

My dear companion
hears the piping call
of gulls
flying before the storm
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The Enchantress

image

From the water she rose
hands like whispering flame
a face in shadow
elsewhere perhaps
ripples spread circles
the enchantment begins

One of a series of pictures from a session in the Adelaide hills last year.

This is also the first time I've posted wholly using android on my new tablet. Lots to get used to but I think it will work :-)


Monochrome self portrait with white light bars across my face

The Wind In My Heart

Monochrome self portrait with white light bars across my face

Searching, it's a common theme here on this blog ... searching for that indescribable piece that falls into place the moment we find it. The thing you don't know what you're looking for until you've found it. That thing.

I've been looking for pictures to post ... this is Pictures with Words after all ... but I've come to realise over the course of this search that I'm grown dissatisfied with my body of work. Don't get me wrong, I don't dislike them, they remain good photographs but they don't represent where I am now. What to do about that? Well take some more obviously! Like this one taken this afternoon as the sun was beginning to set out the window of the flat. Those beams of incandescence, hot and bright. I felt them as I closed my eyes and breathed.

The wind in my heart

The wind in my heart

The dust in my head

The dust in my head

The wind in my heart

The wind in my heart

(come to) drive them away

Drive them away.


Listening Wind, Talking Heads, Remain In Light


blurred landscape of indeterminate origin

Sum of the Parts #2

blurred landscape of indeterminate origin

earth and sky 
we walk between 
pondering both

A new piece for my ongoing project the Sum of the Parts where I'm intentionally blurring a scene during capture in an attempt to deconstruct them into their component parts. The result invites the viewer to ponder and create their own landscape ... a new sum of the parts. One day I'll get enough of these to put a show together.

I particularly like the way this one remains ambiguous. Is it dusk or midday? Inland or coastal?


Poised

...fond...
Poised
as I ride the wave
the rush and churn of new over old
I am still.
centered and reflecting a blue sky

 

I love gerberas.