Recent Acquisitions, The Arts Centre, Melbourne

Acquired for the Public Art Collection at the Arts Centre.

Top: See the Lady Sawn in Half! 1996 Linocut (diptych) 61.5 x 46.5 cm (each panel
Bottom: Lydia the Tattooed Lady 1995 Linocut 89 x 60 cm

Click on images to enlarge.

Pupae

pu'p/a (pl. ~ae) form taken by insect in torpid state of passive development between larva and imago; hence ~AL a. [mod. L; in L = girl, doll]

From THE CONCISE OXFORD DICTIONARY, Oxford University Press, 1983

Recent Acquisitions, Tweed River Art Gallery, NSW

These works have been acquired for the permanent collection of Tweed River Art Gallery, NSW.

Images from top:
Point of View 2005 Oil pastel 112 x 76 cm
View of A Woman I 2005 Oil pastel 112 x 76 cm
View of A Woman lll 2005 Oil pastel 112 x 76 cm
Discord 2004 Oil pastel 76.5 x 56.5 cm
Enigma 2000 Oil pastel 76.5 x 57 cm
Untitled (Blue) 2001 Oil pastel 76.5 x 57 cm
Untitled (Crimson and Scarlet) 2001 Oil pastel 76.5 x 57 cm
Untitled (Red) 2001 Oil pastel 76.5 x 57 cm

Recent Acquisition, Deakin University

Trio 2006 Acrylic and oil on canvas, triptych, 76 x 38 cm, each panel

This work has recently been acquired for the Art Collection of Deakin University.

A Work in Progress

Click on images to enlarge.

The Enchanted Forest at LaTrobe Regional Gallery

From top:
Gallery entrance
Left to right: works by Milan Milojevic, Louisann Zahra-King, Deborah Klein
Gallery view prior to artist's talk, 24 March 2009. Left to right: Swarm installation, Virginia Woolf and the Lighthouse (projected image) and (far right hand side) work by Jazmina Cininas.

Click on images to enlarge.

The Enchanted Forest - new gothic storytellers
Latrobe Regional Gallery
138 Commercial Road
Morwell Victoria 3840

The exhibition runs from 20 February - 19 April.

Moth Women: The New Super Heroes

Acrylic on papier mache masks.
Photographs by Tim Gresham.

Linocuts in Progress, March, 2009

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Women, Art and Politics

Top: Zelda Fitzgerald in the Night Garden, 1992, woodcut 53 x 74 cm
Bottom: Installation shot taken prior to my artist's talk on Wednesday, 11 March. Left to right: works by Heather Shimmen, Anne Bennett, Rona Green, Deborah Klein and Belinda Fox.

Click on images to enlarge.

Women, Art and Politics is curated by Lorri Lambert. The exhibition explores issues informing the work of female artists represented in the permanent collection of Swan Hill Regional Art Gallery.

Swan Hill Regional Art Gallery
Horseshow Bend
Swan Hill, Victoria 3585.

Exhibition dates: 18 February-15 March

Dorothy Parker's The Waltz

Why, thank you so much. I'd adore to.

I don't want to dance with him. I don't want to dance with anybody. And even if I did, it wouldn't be him. He'd be well down among the last ten. I've seen the way he dances; it looks like something you do on Saint Walpurgis Night. Just think, not a quarter of an hour ago, here I was sitting, feeling so sorry for the poor girl he was dancing with. And now I'm going to be the poor girl. Well, well. Isn't it a small world?

....... What can you say, when a man asks you to dance with him? I most certainly will not dance with you. I'll see you in hell first. Why thank you. I'd like to awfully, but I'm having labour pains. Oh, yes, do let's dance together - it's so nice to meet a man who isn't a scaredy-cat about catching my beri-beri. No. There was nothing for me to do, but say I'd adore to. Well, we might as well get it over with. All right, Cannonball, let's run out on the field. You won the toss; you can lead.

Why, I think it's more of a waltz, really. Isn't it? We might just listen to the music a second. Shall we? Oh, yes, it's a waltz. Mind? Why, I'm simply thrilled. I'd love to waltz with you.

I'd love to waltz with you. I'd love to waltz with you. I'd love to have my tonsils out. I'd love to be in a midnight fire at sea. Well, it's too late now. We're getting under way. Oh. Oh, dear. Oh, dear, dear, dear. Oh, this is even worse than I thought it would be. I suppose that's the one dependable law of life - everything is always worse than you thought it was going to be. Oh, if I had any real grasp of what this dance would be like, I'd have held out for sitting it out. Well, it will probably amount to the same thing in the end. We'll be sitting it out on the floor in a minute, if he keeps this up.

I'm so glad I brought it to his attention that this is a waltz they're playing. Heaven knows what might have happened, if he'd thought it was something fast; we'd have blown the sides right out of the building. Why does he always want to be somewhere that he isn't? Why can't we stay in one place just long enough to get acclimated? It's this constant rush, rush, rush, that's the curse of American life. That's the reason that we're all of us so - Ow! For God's sake, don't kick, you idiot; this is only second down. Oh, my shin. My poor, poor, shin, that I've had since I was a little girl!

Oh, no, no, no. Goodness no. It didn't hurt the least little bit. And anyway, it was all my fault. Really it was. Truly. Well, you're just being sweet to say that. It really was all my fault.

.......I'm past all feeling now. The only way I can tell when he steps on me is that I can hear the splintering of bones. And all the events of my life are passing before my eyes. There was the time I was in a hurricane in the West Indies, there was the day I got my head cut open in the taxi smash, there was the night the drunken lady threw a bronze ash-tray at her own true love and got me instead, there was that summer what the sailboat kept capsizing. Ah, what an easy, peaceful time was mine, until I fell in with Swifty here. I didn't know what trouble was, before I got drawn into this danse macabre. I think my mind is beginning to wander. It almost seems to me as if the orchestra were stopping. It couldn't be, of course; it could never be. And yet in my ears there is a silence like the sound of angel voices....

Oh, they've stopped, the mean things. They're not going to play any more. Oh, darn. Oh, do you think they would? Do you really think so, if you pay them twenty dollars? Oh, that would be lovely. And look, do tell them to play this same thing. I'd simply adore to go on dancing.

Excerpts from The Waltz by Dorothy Parker. From The Original Portable as Arranged by Dorothy Parker in 1944.

Pictured above: The Dance, 1997, linocut, chine colle 37 x 37 cm

The Girl in the Tower

The Long, Long Braid, 2001, Acrylic on 4 canvases, 141.5 x 40.5 cm
Click on image to enlarge.

There was once a maiden who had lived her entire life in a tall tower in the middle of a dark and almost impenetrable wood. Her father had locked her in there many years before. No one could exactly remember why any more. It seems that fathers did that a lot in the olden days. At least he made sure that she had a substantial store of provisions before vanishing completely from her life. The tower had no door - just a window at the very top at which the girl would sit and dream of all the wonderful adventures she would have, if only she could escape.

With the passing of time it seemed her empty days grew longer and longer - and so did her hair. Just looking after it - washing, drying, brushing, combing and braiding it - became a full-time job, but certainly not one that relieved the tedium of her days.

Stories of her beauty and her lustrous locks spread far and wide until one day a handsome prince rode by on a milk white steed, curious to see if the rumours he had heard were true. A single glance at the figure in the tower told him they were. But it seemed he would forever be condemned to worship her from a distance.

Next minute there was a flurry of movement at the window. In no time at all the girl had lowered her braid - it was now the exact same height as the tower - and was beckoning him to climb.

In even less time he had clambered up and was by her side. The handsome prince was full of tales of his great adventures in the outside world, of vast armies he had defeated, of entire kingdoms he had conquered and of countless maidens he had wooed and won. But none of these maidens, he assured her, could compare to her, because not one of them had such long and wondrous hair.

The girl begged to be able to join him in his adventures. But of course her hair would be a hindrance and she would have to cut it off.

He begged her not to do so - it was what made her so uniquely beautiful. He could never feel the same way about her without her glorious long hair.

They argued late into the night until both fell asleep, exhausted. The prince awoke early the next morning, and to his disbelief, found he was quite alone in the room.

Then he noticed what looked like the end of his lover’s braid tied to the leg of a chair. The rest of it was trained out of the window.

He staggered across the room just in time to see the girl climbing to the ground. Her hair was cut short like that of a lowly pageboy. He couldn’t believe his eyes - she must have borrowed his sword while he slept.

Years of fighting to keep her increasingly unruly hair under control had made her something of an expert in knot and ropework techniques. She gave the braid a short, sharp tug. Immediately it loosened from the chair leg and fell noiselessly at her feet.

The prince’s heart leapt to his throat. “How on earth am I going to escape?” he cried.

“Grow your own hair!” answered the maiden as she mounted the milk white steed and rode off into the sunrise.

…a thousand words, Tweed River Art Gallery, NSW

Anon, 1998, colour linocut, 57.5 x 38 cm.
Click on image to enlarge.

Curated by Susi Muddiman and Gail McDermott, the exhibition features works selected from the Print Archive of the Print Council of Australia.

Tweed River Art Gallery
Cnr Tweed Valley Way and Mistral Road
Murwillumbah NSW 2484
Phone: 02 66702792

The exhibition will run from 27 March – 13 September.

Anon was originally part of a body of work called Private Collection. It was exhibited at Australian Galleries, Melbourne, in 2000 and comprised drawings, miniature multi panelled paintings and relief prints. This series, which marked a major change of direction in my work, evolved after a visit to London in 1997. In a small upstairs room in Kenwood House on Hampstead Heath I discovered an astonishing collection of mourning jewellery and portrait miniatures. Subsequently I investigated other similarly fine collections, most notably in London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and the National Portrait Gallery. But it is the contents of that modest room at Kenwood House which had the greatest impact, possibly because this was where what was has been a long, ongoing journey began.

A significant part of my previous work, namely the Tattooed Faces and Figures, had focused on women's sewing iconography, sometimes incorporating motifs such as lace and other textile-related patterns. This eventually led to a number of experimental works wherein linocuts were printed onto fabric, layered and hand stitched. The last, and most ambitious, of these was The Daughter of Time (1997, linocut on white and grey interfacing with hand stitching 200 x 76 cm.) The last-minute incorporation of two overlapping oval braids was quite intuitive, little more than a compositional device. Uncannily, however, it anticipated the next phase of my work, in which hair, particularly intricately patterned knots and braids, would take centre stage.

The motif of lace was also carried though in the majority of the relief prints that directly followed this work, including Anon. It is printed from two blocks onto semi-transparent Japanese Mending Tissue, which was chosen both for its sensitive and receptive surface and its resemblance to the fabrics with which I had previously experimented, particularly interfacing. As with the Fabric Pieces, the paper is an integral part of the visual language of the work.

Initially the manner in which the hair in mourning jewellery was painstakingly woven and patterned translated into my own work as an extension of the sewing iconography I had previously employed. But very soon hair, with its opposing qualities of seductiveness and creepiness (as in the context of mourning jewellery) assumed a significance all its own. For Anon and its companion works, I extended my research to an investigation of Celtic knots. In order to exploit the increasingly intricate knots and braids to the fullest, I was obliged to turn my protagonists’ faces away from the viewer. The title of this work best describes their subsequent fate.

Deborah Klein
Melbourne, February, 2009

My New Blue Press

It finally arrived! Many thanks to Paul Compton and Shane Jones for delivering the press and carrying it up all those stairs.
Click on image to enlarge.

Magritte - The Eternally Inspiring

Viewing Rene Magritte's painting The Eternally Obvious at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, December 2008 (top). This work was the point of departure for The Daughter of Time,1997, linocut on white and grey interfacing, hand stitching, 200 x 76 cm (bottom). Click on images to enlarge.

Work in Progress

Lino blocks in progress for artist's books The Enchanted Hair Ornaments and Moth Masks. Click on image to enlarge.

Studio views, January 2009

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Maroondah City Council Art Collection

Installation view: Sister Act (colour linocut)  photographed with Untitled #19 (oil on canvas) by Shane Jones. Curated by Damian Smith. Click on image to enlarge.

Maroondahartgallery

Maroondah Federation Estate

32 Greenwood Avenue

Ringwood 

The exhibition runs from 15 January to 28 March 2009.

A visit to Susanna Heller's studio, Brooklyn, NY

December, 2008. Click onto images to enlarge.
Top: Susanna Heller with her painting On the Heel - Toe Express
Bottom: Students from RMIT New York Study Tour, 2008.

A visit to Harlan and Weaver, New York, NY

23 December 2008. Click onto images to enlarge.
From top:
(1) Printer Maggie Wright with Shane Jones, Kiki Smith etchings
(2) Kiki Smith etchings
(3 & 4) Kiki Smith etchings
(5) Studio view
(6) Louise Bourgeois spider
(7) Maggie Wright with Louise Bourgeois etching
(8) Plan cabinet with Louise Bourgeois etchings
Our thanks to Felix Harlan, Carol Weaver and everyone at Harlan and Weaver, with a special thank you to Maggie Wright for making our visit so memorable and inspiring.

Studio 889, Bronx, NY

Christmas exhibition, 6 December 2008. Click onto images to enlarge.
Top: Studio view with artists and print enthusiasts
Bottom: Deborah Klein.
Thanks to Alejandra Delfin and everyone at Studio 889 for a great exhibition, a wonderful evening, and for making us feel so welcome.