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View from Veranda - sunset 8/12/07
All of the sunset/sky shots posted below over a 10 day period, are from the same place on our verandah looking in the same direction south/westish over the southern suburbs of Melbourne (Australia). These are summer shots where i can see the sun drop down over the horizon. Towards the end of summer and into winter, the sun moves around to the right so much so, that I can't see it from my verandah vantage point.
View from the Veranda - sunset 5/12/07
View from the Veranda - sunset 4/12/07
View from Veranda - rain clouds 3/12/07
Cold fronts close in regularly in Melbourne.
This is the same view as the others shown here in recent days. It's the same in amazingly different ways. Storms raced across the suburbs of Melbourne today (Monday) - This photo from the veranda, as the rain rolls in towards us from the Bay.
View from Veranda - Sunset 1/12/07
Same veranda, same direction, different sunset.
Today's View from the Veranda - Sunset 30/11/07
Same place, same direction, same view, different every day.
Today's View from the Veranda - Sunset 29/11/07
Our veranda looks south over the southern suburbs of Melbourne.
"The Floor" - Floor covered with photographic imagery, Lindsay Colborne 1995
Entering the gallery was a daunting experience for some. Unsure whether to enter, they would stand at the front door and call out, "Is it OK to walk on this?"
"Yes", was the answer. Of course it was. Walking all over the art was the whole idea. Everything changes, particularly when you interact with it. Nothing lasts forever, everything is eventually destroyed and remade. The act of looking at the floor art as you walked on it played an active part in it's destruction. By helping to destroy the work as they looked at it, the viewers of the work played an active role in the theme of the work.
Since the work was nothing but glued-together bits of photocopy paper, I wasn't expecting it to last too long. I wasn't even sure if it would last through the opening night, but in the end it proved quite resilient and apart from a few nicks and tears, it stayed together for more than a month. Finally a dance party was held on it and "The Floor" was destroyed once and for all.
But that was not the end of it.
"The Floor" - Floor covered with photographic imagery, Lindsay Colborne
The art gallery used to be an RSL Hall, so it had a lot of floor space. I was asked to be part of a group exhibition and when I walked in and saw the size of the floor, without thinking I asked the gallery owner, "Can I exhibit my work on the floor?" She said, "Sure."
At that stage I had no idea what I was going to do, except that I was going to cover the floor somehow. I had limited time to get the floor down, which left no time to develop my concepts concerning the nature of change, which will have to be the subject of a future floor, so this time I simply floated many of my existing photos of people in a sea of white. I tiled the images out on an A3 laser writer and glued them all together piece by piece, there were hundreds of them, maybe thousands. Each people-photo is life size and made up of about 50 A3 pieces. It took me two solid weeks of printing and gluing and positioning to completely cover the RSL Hall-sized floor.
"Back Yard in Coorparoo" - Lindsay Colborne
I lived in Coorparoo in this house for a while, and so I'm wondering what the name "Coorparoo" actually means. I know it's an Indigenous word, but that's all I know. I've just now gone to Wikipedia and discovered... that it may mean "place of the biting mosquito" or "call of the dingo" or maybe it's the name of a creek that runs off Norman Creek... I don't know. I think that particular creek, which runs past where my father and mother grew up, is now a large cement drain - very practical in the floods. This site reckons that Coorparoo means "a ground dove", and that the name resembles the note of a cooing bird. But that site also reckons that Mt Cootha means "Dark Honey" and I always thought it meant "One Tree" because there used to be one very big tree that towered above all the others before it was chopped it down. - Well obviously... I can imagine the conversation of the first settlers... "Wow!!! Look at that wonderful big tree that towers above all the rest!" - "Yeah. Let's chop it down and burn it!"
Thompson Estate is what Annerly used to be called before WWII, and according to my Dad it's roughly between Ekibin Creek and Buranda. Ekibin Creek I now know is the name of the creek that is now a big flood-proofed cement waterway which flows off Norman Creek and is the creek that the Indigenous people may of called Coorparoo. Thompson Estate is a stones throw from Coorparoo and interestingly enough, if you did need to actually throw a stone from Thompson Estate to Coorparoo, you would have to throw it over the inbetween suburb of Stones Corner. Both my Mum and my Dad are from the area and they know only one story about the name of Coorparoo. In the 20's 30's and 40's when they were growing up there, they knew Coorparoo as coming from the Indigenous word for the cooing sound of the Indian Dove. My Dad explains it like this... "Cooooorpaaaaaroooooooo" he says, like the Dove would coo it.
"Crucifixion" - Photograph, Lindsay Colborne
If you do not send this blog to any people you will have very bad luck, but...
Send this blog to 10 people and you will have good luck and a wish will come true.
Send this blog to 20 people and you will have even better good luck and two wishes will come true.
Send this blog to 30 people and you will have very good luck indeed, and three wishes will come true.
Send this blog to 1000 people and you will show them all how gullible you are.
I understand why people send traditional chain letters with the hope of making lots of money from fools down the line who think they can get something for nothing, but why do people send email chain letters that promise no money, just good luck and miracles if you send them on to large numbers of other people? And why do people believe it and diligently send them on?
Sometimes the messages contained in the email chain letters are inspirational and/or informative, but why the need to promise miracles to get people to send them on, or bad luck if they don't?
The altruistic reason is that they think they have a good message that people need to hear. They play on people's 'fear of lack' in order to get them to send the good message on. I still have no idea why though. Because the thing that ends up being bounced around the world is not a good message but rather, a large number of expressions of 'fear and lack' from the lives of the people sending them. A seemingly altruistic unselfish concern for the welfare of others becomes a lack of faith in people's ability to recognize and pass on a good thing when they see it.
To send these email chain letters on, no matter what the message, is to send on an expression of the belief that you can't look after yourself and that you need someone to give you miracles on a silver platter.
But seriously, if you don't send this blog to 10 people right now, you will get a big boil on your bottom.
"IceBergs" - photograph, Lindsay Colborne
There's so much more to these people.
In 1981 I worked as Camera Assistant on a feature film which was shot on Moreton Island just off the coast of Brisbane, Australia. You won't have heard of the film although I did see it on TV once. That is to say, it was on TV once, just once. This photo of some cast and crew members was taken during a swim on a rest day. What a beautiful place it was and what beautiful people. You spend six days a week living in tents on an island, making a film, getting little sleep, working hard and closely with 25 other people all with their job to do, each job interconnected and woven together to produce three reels of film that can be tucked under your arm or burnt to DVD and frizbee'd away. On the seventh day you rest in the company of friends with whom you hold a bond.
"Bird Tree" - Parrots in my Chestnut Tree, Winter, Lindsay Colborne
There was only enough room on the feed tray for two or three at a time and so the birds would wait their turn sitting in the branches of the Chestnut Tree.
When I was living in Olinda in the Dandenong Ranges just east of Melbourne, Australia, there was a Chestnut tree right outside my window. I placed a small tray of parrot seed on the window ledge in the hope that I may attract the Parrots and Sulphur Crested Cockatoos to my window, with the idea of taking close-up photos of them by setting-up my camera just inches away on the other side of the window glass. It took a few months to attract any birds at all. But slowly they came to the tree, and cautiously from the tree to the feed bowl. At first, the slightest movement I made on my side of the glass scared them away. They did not understand my strange and complicated ways any better than I did. But over time as they saw that my movements, though odd, were predictable and harmless, they stayed longer. After 12 months I had regular visitors to my window. They each had different personalities. This one shy, that one forthright. This one fearful, that one bold. I came to know and love them all, but always, i remained on the other side of the glass.
I've lately been thinking a lot about the trees and the birds and the beautiful people in the hills, feeding the kookies by hand and looking out through the trees to the lights of the city. Now is the winter of my discontent, and it's only autumn.
"The World of Men 2" - Photo + Mulberry Splat Painting, Lindsay Colborne
Here's the mulberry splat wall of men. It goes down there and around the corner with a gap up here to put a person into and complete the picture.
"The World Of Men" - photo + Mulberry Splat Mural, Lindsay Colborne.
This is a small bit of a large mulberry-splat-mural-painting that goes down the wall and around the corner. The mural is especially designed and constructed to be mono-coloured (primarily blue) and mono-subjected (the subject of men) so that it is not actually "finished" until somebody stands in front of it - and I take a photo to record that moment in time when the painting is finished. When the person moves away, the painting is no longer finished. When a new person stands in front of the mural, it is once again finished, but in a different way. A different conclusion. This painting is finished and then not finished and then finished again in a different way, over and over.
The above photo is a record of one of those finished times.
There are more.
"Splatt" - Mulberry splat painting, LC 1994
When I was living in Spring Hill in Brisbane (Australia), I had my 2 door 1966 XP white Falcon HardTop parked at the side of the house underneath a large Mulberry Tree. During the Mulberry season I discovered why it wasn't such a good idea to park my pure-white 2 Door XP Falcon underneath a Mulberry Tree. One morning I walked outside, took a look at my car and stopped in my tracks. Many mulberries had fallen from the tree and left indelible purple mulberry-splat stains all over my white-of-white pride and joy.
My first thought upon seeing the purple disaster was, "ARRRRGGHHHHH!!!!".
My second thought was, "NOOOOOOO!!!".
My third thought was, "Hang on... actually, hang on a second..."
And my fourth thought was, "...those mulberry splats look pretty good!"
I collected a couple of buckets of mulberries, stuck up some blank white art paper on the wall, invited a friend over, and we had a 'chuck mulberries at the pure white paper' party. Later on, after the splats had become permanent marks, I drew other stuff into them.
Getting the splats off the car is another story.
"Eating (The Fourth Wall)" - Toilet Mural, UQ Student Union, LC 1994
The Fourth Wall of Eating is the door.
I tell people it's a self portrait but nobody ever agrees with me. It was the first section that I painted and at that stage I really had no idea that i was going to do any more. I covered the existing appallingly bigoted graffiti on the door with a coat of white, and began painting. To get rid of that graffiti was the reason I was there, but at the same time I also saw my replacement painting as just another type of graffito, so I painted silently and secretly in the night just like a real graffiti artist.
As i did more paintings, people started talking about them and wondering who was doing them. We kept it secret for many months until people started to accept the "new graffiti". I heard one man say that his three year old daughter always insisted on be taken into that particular cubicle so that she could look at the cow on the wall.
The original idea of stopping people from writing immature and bigoted graffiti on the toilet walls was a success. They still graffitied the paintings but only in the flat colour areas and now the graffiti used the painting subject matter as a starting point for the graffiti subject matter. For instance, in one of the ribs of the man on the door somebody wrote, "No man has ribs like this", and later in the next rib down somebody wrote, "This man needs Jesus", and a few weeks later in the next rib down somebody wrote, "This man was Jesus".
The graffiti in the women's toilet in those days was usually much more enlightened discussion & ongoing written debates on various topics. It was far more entertaining than the crass bigoted male toilet graffito one-liners.
"Eating (Three Walls)" - Toilet Wall Graffiti, UQ Student Union, LC 1994
This cubicle has a meat eating theme. Starting with the rain forest on the first wall, clearing the rain forest to raise beef on the second wall, eating the beef as hamburgers on the third wall and the 4th wall, which is painted on the door and the subject of the blog entry immediately above this one... the effects.
"Eating (The Third Wall)" - Toilet Wall Graffito, UQ Student Union, LC 1994
I worked at the University of Queensland Student Union from 1991 to 1995 and in that time I went to the toilet many times. Information like that would normally be filed under "things you don't need to know" and this case is no different except that I needed to explain why I was in those toilets everyday day, and that's also fairly obvious, so I'll start again...
The old UQ Student Union male toilet cubicles used to be covered with so much bigoted homophobic racist immature and uncreative graffiti that i came to loathe going in there and subjecting myself to it everyday. So I decided to do a bit of graffiti of my own and create virtual themed cubicle worlds, a different theme in each cubicle. And above the urinal, paintings of faces of men looking secretly across and down to check out the size of other men's willies. And in the spot above the sink where the mirror used to be, a painting of someone checking himself out in the painted mirror. Etcetera.
I haven't been back to UQ for years but I'm pretty sure the building that these paintings were in has been demolished and replaced, so the only place my graffiti cubicles now exist is in my photographic records and in the memory all those who pooed and weed in them.
"Sacred Women's Rock" - (acrylic, oil, newspaper) LC 1999
I painted this picture at the Sacred Aboriginal Women's Rock in the Dandenong Ranges a few years ago. It's marked on the signs and maps with a white-fella name, but the locals know what it really is. And some of them know the energy and power of the place. The Women's Rock is a broad and nurturing expanse of rock on which one or many people can sit peacefully or lie in the sun and be at one with nature for a little while. It's a place to relax and unwind and know that everything is as it is meant to be. Just below is the Man's Rock; a much smaller shaft of stone protruding abruptly from the ground and just big enough for one person to sit on the top. Sit here if you need to fill yourself up with energy to attack the day.
WHY IS THERE NO ROCK IN MY PAINTING OF THE ROCK?
Before you go down to sit on the rocks, ask permission from the spirits of the place. If they say no, don't go. If you think it's beneath you to ask permission from the Spirit of the place before entering the area, don't go. in the past, we wouldn't have been allowed to go anyway. I had been going to the rocks daily for some time before i attempted to paint them. I needed to know I was accepted by them and I'm sure that I was. But going to sit on sacred rocks is a whole different thing to painting them. i have to go deep into a thing to paint it, and although I could feel that the rock was sacred, and I could sit on it and feel it's energy... back then I don't think I was ready to go deep into that sacred place, and I think the rock knew it.
I started several different paintings of the rock and each time I ended up painting only the trees around it. It wasn't that I couldn't have forced myself to paint the rock itself, it's just that i gravitated towards the trees. The new energy of the trees was easier to deal with than the old energy of the rock which contains so much memory of that place and of all the people who have come there for thousands of years. We feel the memory of places and things. This is why we are drawn to old growth trees which have avoided the axe for hundreds of years. They contain a memory and a power that we can feel and connect with. The big old companion trees to this rock had been cut down by the white settlers over 150 years ago for the wood and also to allow people to see the view. The whole mountain was dairy farmed and treeless. It wasn't until the 1920's and 30's that the farms were pushed out and the trees began to grow again. That's why all the trees on the Dandenong Ranges are the same height, they all started growing at the same time about 80 years ago. And that's how much memory the trees that have grown back up around the rock have. But the Sacred Rock is hundreds of thousands of years old and holds all of the memory of that place.
At the time, I thought the rock was saying to me, "You're not allowed to paint me".
Now I think it was saying, "How about painting the trees? They're nice."
And they were, but now it's time to go back and add the bottom bit to that picha.
