Memories of MIFFS Past

Yesterday this photo (shared via Instagram) came up as a Facebook memory. Two years and one day ago I was based in a small hotel room in Melbourne for the duration of the 2019 Melbourne International Film Festival. In between screenings I worked on several of the drawings that are now part of BACKSTORIES, my show at Stephen McLaughlan Gallery (currently in lockdown). Somewhere along the way, Scribe, the drawing on the worktable, was renamed Feather Tattoo. I think I prefer its former title. 

This is the original post (minus the hashtags):

Scribe, the drawing currently on my worktable, anticipated one of yesterday’s MIFF 2019  films, THE JUNIPER TREE (Dir. Nietzchka Keene, 1986), a dark medieval fantasy based on a tale collected by the Brothers Grimm. In the guise of a raven, the dead mother of a boy, Jónas, brings him a magical feather. The recently restored film is graced by a luminous central performance from Björk, as the boy’s stepsister, Margit. 

“Hope” is the thing with feathers

“Hope” is the thing with feathers —

That perches in the soul —

And sings the tune without the words —

And never stops — at all —

And sweetest — in the Gale — is heard —

And sore must be the storm —

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm —

I’ve heard it in the chillest land —

And on the strangest Sea —

Yet, never, in Extremity,

It asked a crumb — of Me. 

-   Emily Dickinson (1891)

Pictured top: Feather Tattoo (AKA Hope), 2019, ink and gouache on Khadi paper, 21 x 15 cm. 

It’s almost two years since I made this drawing and like to think that something of the almost overwhelming sense of optimism I felt at the time is conveyed in the work. Today, while the State of Victoria holds its breath, I hover between despair or (as in the lyric from A Cock-Eyed Optimist by Oscar Hammerstein), am “stuck like a dope with a thing called hope”.