From the British Museum to Ballarat: Maria Sibylla Merian and me

Maria Sibylla Merian, c 1700, copperplate by Jacobus Houbraken from a portrait by Georg Gsell

During our visit to London in April, Shane and I spent two memorable afternoons in the Prints and Drawings Room of the British Museum. My primary aim was to view works by the artist-naturalist Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717) including her album of 91 drawings entitled Merian's Drawings of Surinam Insects. Having this magnificent volume entirely to ourselves to study in depth - and tranquility - was an experience I will never forget.

Among the album's standouts were the Common or Spectacled Caiman and South American False Coral Snake, and Pineapple (with examples of a caterpillar, chrysalises, two butterflies and a beetle). Both works are pictured directly below.

On the second day we also perused selected works on paper by Hans Holbein, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Eric Gill and Edgar Degas. Despite undergoing extensive construction work, the Prints and Drawing Room was a peaceful haven compared to many of the main galleries of the BM. Every time we entered the building it sounded like a football match was in full swing. On our way to the Prints and Drawings Department, we gingerly navigated a path through hoards of rowdy visitors mindlessly snapping selfies in front of mummy cases. 

Shane pores over a folio of drawings by Edgar Degas.

Considerably less hectic was the Enlightenment Room, which resembles an elaborate Cabinet of Curiosities. It’s an enchanting world completely unto itself and is unquestionably one of my favourite rooms in the British Musum. On display was an album of watercolours by Maria Sibylla Merian. Sadly, I’m not in a position to call in every three months when one of its pages is turned.

It’s going to take awhile to process all that I saw and experienced in the UK, particularly in regard to its possible impact on my work. But as I tentatively begin a new watercolour in the Ballarat studio, I'm already wishing I could magically transport myself back to London to see those Maria Sybilla Merian watercolours again.

Directly below: early stages of Catoxantha opulenta beetle woman, 2014, watercolour on A3 Khadi paper.

Seventh Skin

Deborah Klein, Anon, 1998, Linocut (ed.14/55) 57.5 x 38 cm 

Banyule Art Collection. Acquired 1998

My linocut Anon, 1998, is part of the exhibition Seventh Skin, which opens on 18 June. Its premise parallels that which has long underpinned much of my own work:

Feeling ‘comfortable in one’s own skin’ is an expression that has multiple meanings in today’s age. This exhibition asks ‘Just how many layers do we present through our public face to the world?’ and ‘Exactly what is real and what is disguised or concealed?’

- Claire Watson, Curator, Seventh Skin

Watson examines this complex theme through a diverse range of works, encompassing photography, printmaking, video, jewellery and sculpture.

The exhibition includes artworks from the Banyule Art Collection by:

Pat Brassington, Lyndell Brown /Charles Green, Jazmina Cininas, Shaun Gladwell, Rona Green, Clare Humphries, Deborah Klein, Yuri Kawanabe, Christian Thompson and Anne Zahalka.

And works by:

Roseanne Bartley, Eric Bridgeman, Cate Consandine, Troy Emery, Kate James, Claire McArdle, Polixeni Papapetrou, Deborah Paauwe, Hannah Raisin, Tania Smith, Jacqui Stockdale and Hiromi Tango.

To learn more about Anon and the context in which it was created, click HERE.

Seventh Skin opens on 18 June and runs until 2 August.

The opening event is on Thursday 26 June, 6-8 pm.

Councilor Craig Landon, Mayor of Banyule Council and Associate Professor Robert Nelson, Monash University will launch the exhibition.

Seventh Skin

Hatch Contemporary Art Space

14 Ivanhoe Parade

Ivanhoe Vic 3079

Tel: (03) 9457 9851

Hours: Tues-Sat, 10am-5pm

Judging the Biblio Art Award, an Artist Talk and the Dachshund Dash

From left: Self with Sarah Gubby and former Biblio Judge, artist David Frazer

I’ve just returned from three days of sampling the varied delights of this year’s first Winter Weekend at Port Fairy in South-western Victoria. Jo Canham, Director of Blarney Books and Art had invited me to co-judge one of its main events: the 6^th Biblio Art Awards. My fellow judge was local artist Essie Warmuth.

Essie and I were overwhelmed by the sheer diversity and inventiveness of many of the entries, which made singling out a single work as Grand Prize winner that much more challenging. In the end, however, we chose the artist book What Katy Did, by Avril Makula.

Other award winners were Polyanna Guthrie (Youth Award) Helen Fitzhardinge (Storytellers Award) Anne-Maree Hunter (3D award – sponsored by Bluestone Magazine). Nine-year-old twins Tom and Darcy Lynch also received an encouragement award for their entry.

To learn about Biblio, visit Blarney Books and Art and Bluestone Magazine.

For more about Avril Makula’s prize-winning entry, What Katy Did, visit Moth Woman Press.

The Prize Winners were announced on Saturday evening at the lively, crowded opening of Biblio.

On the following day at 3 pm I gave an artist talk at Blarney Books and Art. We had a full house - and what a wonderfully warm, attentive and enthusiastic audience they were.

Artist talk at Blarney Books and Art. Blarney Books Director Jo Canham is on the far right.

After the talk I enjoyed chatting with my fellow Biblio judge, her partner Susan, and some of the audience members

Over the course of the long weekend I met some terrific people, caught up with several old friends and saw some stunning book art.

Somehow we also found time for sightseeing. We also managed to catch Winter Weekend's only sporting event: the thrilling Dachshund Dash, which was enormous fun (see directly below). Our old friends Jazmina and Jonas entered their dog Trouble in the Mixed Breeds race. There was no doubting Trouble's enthusiasm, but unfortunately he ran in the wrong direction - several, in fact. 

And they're off! The Dachshund Dash

Jazmina and Jonas put on brave faces following Trouble's doomed effort in the Mixed Breeds race

To the lightouse: DK at Port Fairy's most famous landmark

Shane admires the magnificent Port Fairy Lightouse

the drawn word

During their making you can see the strength of the relationship that exists between writing and drawing through the ease with which a trained hand will freely move between the two. That is, I suspect, because both are part of our literacy, both are tools of representation and both designed as methods of managing multidimensional matter. What separate them are alphabets, dictionaries and the way they are read.

Stephen Farthing, 26 June 2013

Last Saturday afternoon Shane and I attended the opening of a superb exhibition by painters Craig Gough and Wendy Stavrianos at Langford 120 gallery.

It was also the occasion for the Australian launch of the drawn word. The publication's primary aim is to delineate the relationship between writing and drawing, expanding upon ideas originally presented at the third Drawing Out conference, University of the Arts, London in 2012. It is divided into key sections: Definition, Transmission, Application and Representation. My drawing Tattooed Text, 2012 is one of the illustrations that responds to the fifth and final chapter, All Writing is Drawing by Irene Barberis and Janet McKenzie. The artist statement that originally accompanied my drawing is quoted in the book. To read it, click HERE.

the drawn word was edited by Professor Stephen Farthing, RA and Dr Janet McKenzie and is published by Studio International and The Studio Trust, New York, NY, USA (2014).

Image left: Deborah Klein, Tattooed Texts, 2012, pencil; image right: Marian Leven: The Space of Writing, what is that? 2012, watercolour

Dr Irene Barberis. In the background to her right (in blue sweater) is Craig Gough. The painting far right is by Craig.

Background: Painting by Craig Gough; foreground: Cresside Collette and Shane Jones 

The Lady Vanishes

Whilst doing some online research last year, I happened upon an old drawing of mine that had not only vanished from my life, but also from my memory. The unimaginatively named Untitled (Yellow) 2001, oil pastel, 76.5 x 57 cm (pictured above) was originally part of a series of prints, paintings and drawings made between 1998-2004 that focused on the backs of women’s heads. They are reproduced on the Portfolios page of my website under Knots and Braids – all except this one, which somehow slipped through the net.  A number of the works were exhibited in a solo exhibition in Sydney in 2003. The drawing sold from there and vanished to parts unknown. I can’t remember the site on which I discovered it, however I downloaded the image and in all likelihood would have soon forgotten about it again. But in one of the many instances of synchronicity that mark our friendship, noted iPad artist Deborah McMillion recommended an app called Butterfly Cam. Straightaway I recognized the potential of incorporating one of the butterflies featured in the app into my recently unearthed drawing. The intuitive act of progressively adding yellow butterflies to the drawing sparked an idea for a fairy tale, the first I’d written in ages. After writing several drafts, I filed the story and metamorphosed drawing away. Yet again, I almost forgot about the drawing - and the fairy tale too. Deborah McMillion is the only one who ever read the story – at least until now. This evening I exhumed it, dusted it off, did some minor tinkering, and published it on my book blog, Moth Woman Press, along with two versions of the re-configured drawing. To read the illustrated story, The Yellow Butterflies, click HERE.

Myself and my hero

Incredibly, it's 60 years since David Hockney made his first print, the lithograph Self Portrait, 1954 at Bradford College of Art. (It's reproduced on the poster pictured above).

London's Dulwich Picture Gallery recently celebrated this significant anniversary with a survey exhibition focusing entirely on Hockney's printmaking practice. Better still, it coincided with my visit to the UK in April. Hockney's prints, for example, his suites the Rake's Progress, 1961-63 and Six Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm, 1969, have had a considerable impact on my work since I saw my first examples in London in the 1970s. 

David Hockney, A Rake's Progress, 1961-63, a suite of etchings

The former work was primarily responsible for fostering an interest in developing narratives by working serially using literary or other sources as a basis, and incorporating autobiographical elements. For example, The Threepenny Opera, 1928 by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill was a springboard for The Pirate Jenny Prints, 1986-87.  

Deborah Klein, Pirate Jenny at Luna Park, 1986, linocut, 61.5 x 45.5 cm. From
The Pirate Jenny Prints, 1986-87 

And my little seen, most overtly personal work, the Alice in the Cities suite of woodcuts, 1989, took Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass as its point of departure. Like Hockney’s Rake, my protagonist was literally an innocent abroad. To see a handful of the Alice in the Cities prints, click HERE and scroll down. 

Hockney Printmaker was superb. It included many other personal favourites:

My partner Shane Jones contemplates Hockney's etchings The Student - Homage to Picasso, 

and Artist and Model, both 1973. Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, April 2014.

The exhibition opened with another of my favourite prints, Myself and my heroes, 1961. David Hockney will always be one of mine. 

David Hockney, Myself and my heroes, 1961, etching

The exhibition concluded on 11 May. You can read about it in the UK Guardian HERE.

Elsa Lanchester at the BFI

Sue Verney (left) and Deborah Klein (right) flanking a banner of Elsa Lanchester as the Bride of Frankenstein.
British Film Institute, London, May 2014. Photograph: Shane Jones

The British Film Institute on London’s South Bank is one of my favourite haunts. I’ve been going there since I lived in London in the 1970s, not infrequently in the company of one of my oldest and dearest friends, Sue Verney. I have so many happy memories of this place. For example, it was there, many moons ago, that Sue introduced me to Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948, Director Max Ophüls) for which I will be eternally grateful. On another memorable occasion, I introduced Sue to what became another mutual favourite, the dazzling film noir Murder My Sweet (1944, Director Edward Dmytryk).

To my delight, the BFI interior is currently festooned with banners of Elsa Lanchester (1909-1986) an actress Sue and I have long admired. (She and I once sat in a pub in Nottinghill Gate and started a fan letter to her. We finished our drinks, but never did finish the letter – I guess we just couldn’t find the right words).

 

Black Swan, 2013, acrylic on canvas, 

12.5 x 7.5 cm

My miniature painting Black Swan, 2013, is a playful homage to Elsa Lanchester in what is arguably her most famous role: The Bride of Frankenstein (1935, Director James Whale). It’s an extraordinary film and her dual performances as Mary Shelley and the Bride – particularly the latter - are simply astonishing, albeit far too brief. While still in London, I looked her up online and discovered an absolute gem – a two-part interview with Dick Cavett. In Part 1 she speaks of her late husband, the incomparable Charles Laughton. (1)

On a personal note, however, the real revelation came soon after, when Cavett asked her about The Bride of Frankenstein. In one of the movie’s best remembered scenes, the newly unbandaged bride first lays eyes on her husband to be: Frankenstein’s unrequitedly smitten monster, touchingly portrayed by Boris Karloff. Horrified, but  having no words, she begins to hiss – a scene once seen and heard, not easily forgotten. Lanchester tells Cavett that her character's reaction was based on a swan’s warning hisses and promptly launches into a marvelously spirited recreation of the sound.

Ironically, a swan wasn’t the first choice for my painting. Initially I considered other animals, including a skunk, but after much trial and error the black swan, with its downy white flight feathers was the only creature that worked compositionally. The pictorial reference to Elsa Lanchester’s portrayal of Frankenstein’s Bride was completely serendipitous - and not a little uncanny.

Elsa Lanchester and Boris Karloff, The Bride of Frankenstein, 1935

(1)  For Part 1 of Dick Cavett's interview with Elsa Lanchester, click HERE. 

      For Part 2 of the interview, click HERE.

Damias elegans moth woman

The first print to be editioned in our new studio at Ballarat is signed, sealed and soon to be delivered. It's heading for Beastarium, a print exchange portfolio coordinated by Rona Green. In due course, portfolio edition no. 40/40 will become part of the permanent collection of Dubbo Regional Gallery, where it will be exhibited in 2015.

Dubbo Regional Gallery’s prime collecting theme is The Animal in Art. Inspired by the Gallery’s rural location and proximity to Taronga Western Plains Zoo, the Animal in Art seeks to examine issues surrounding the representation of animals in the Visual Arts. The Animal has been used extensively as a symbol, trophy, object and metaphor. The collection tackles some of the wider possibilities of this rationale through works that use the animal as a means of expression whether in a literal or metaphoric way.

(From Dubbo Regional Gallery’s website).

Damias elegans moth woman, 2014

Linocut

Image size: 25 x 24.5 cm

Paper size: 38 x 28 cm

Edition: 40

Inking the block

A squadron of Damias elegans moth women 

I'm Back

From late March and throughout the better part of April I've been visiting London with my partner Shane Jones.

With an unwanted souvenir from the UK finally discarded, namely a severe, lingering dose of flu, there is much to catch up on - but where to start? It seems to me that as good a place as any is from right where I left off - namely preparing for Biblio at Clunes Booktown.

After a nightmarish return flight to Australia (we left London on Monday 28 April and, due to a series of chronic mechanical faults with the planes on both legs of our journey, didn’t land in Melbourne until Thursday 1 May). In total, we were 32 hours late; there was just enough time to snatch a little sleep before setting off for Clunes to set up my stand for Booktown, which ran from 3-4 May.

Biblio, the section in which I exhibited, focused primarily on artist books. It was great to reunite with book artists I’ve long known and admired: David Frazer, Angela Cavalieri, Gracia Haby, Louise Jennison and Dianne Longley, and to have the pleasure of meeting and admiring the work of Deanna Hitti, Tai Smith, An Kyunghee and Nicholas Jones (the latter was also Biblio’s curator). The State Library of Victoria and the Baillieu Libraries also exhibited selected gems from their vast collections. We received hundreds of visitors and an overwhelmingly positive response to our work.

Wesley Bluestone Church, the site of Biblio - Artist Books

At the close of Day 1: raising a glass to toast the birthday of the State Library of Victoria's venerable Des Cowley

For more about Biblio at Clunes Booktown, visit Moth Woman Press HERE.