These are some treasures, unearthed from the archaeological dig that was my spare room - ironically referred to as my study.

Has it really been more than a year since my last post? I apologise for the lull!
By means of explanation: on returning home last year, after being abroad and working on the show for the Bristol Biennial, seeing so many exciting things I needed time to process and re-cooperate.

So once I had returned, apologised sufficiently to my cats and rested myself, I realised that I needed to completely readjust my living space! This took a lot of doing. A large part of this was classifying my 'hoard'. This meant going through absolutely every little treasure and object and piece of junk or paper and deciding whether to donate to an op shop, throw out or store it away. Most things, after long and painful consideration, got chucked/donated. Which was in itself a liberating moment! There remains only the task of finding suitable places for everything that remains.

Anyhow - my house is now very functional and I feel very much in the 'zone' once more. so you can expect some more posts very soon. . .

some photos from my trip

Horror Vacui, 1951in Eastern Lady Chapel, Bristol Cathedral

Horror Vacui, 1964, ibid

Ceiling above my installation, Eastern Lady Chapel

Detail, Eastern Lady Chapel

The final stands - built to bear the weight of the prints!

Bristol junk shop part one

Bristol junk shop part 2

cets!

Canadian goose in Victoria Park, Hackney

Amsterdam shop window cet

best eared cet

Yahtzeeganger at Vondel Park, Amsterdam

Horror Vacui, Bristol Biennial, Bristol Cathedral

These wonderful images were taken by the talented Mr Darn McCrann!

OK. Apologies for no posting in a million years - my sole focus has been gearing up to leave for Bristol and everything else in my life fell by the wayside! But now I am here, in Bristol (in no small part because of the $$$ I raised through the benefit gig at gasometer - thanks again guys!), and my work has been mounted and tomorrow i make the little wooden stands for my prints to sit in. I'm getting help from this lovely girl called Lina to construct them and yesterday we met up to discuss my ideas for the stands, I was more than slightly embarrassed by my less-than-technical drawing of what I wanted to make! (pictured below). The Northern Transept which is where I am exhibiting (and the entire Bristol Cathedral) is an incredible space and quite a challenging one to install art work into. For starters the cathedral is a huge, perfectly formed, saturated in historical significance and UTILE art object, it is constructed so beautifully (and BY HAND) and the scale of it all is so enormous that it is a quite a task to just insert some contemporary art into that corner there... There are no walls that can be used to affix works, obviously nothing can be bolted to the ancient floors, and clearly any attempts to match the ornate forms within the space would look clumsy. Keeping these considerations in mind, I came up with equilateral triangles from 3 x 1 wood, the sides of which would measure the bottom of the prints (either 32 or 47"), one side having a groove set into it into which the prints slot in, the point of the triangle points behind the print. Fingers crossed!!

My all time favourite space in the cathedral is Chapter House, unsurprisingly it is the earliest surviving part of the cathedral (Norman built) and is a site intended for monks to be able to experience silent reflection and prayer. During the install I will steal away and take some photographs of this incredible room! Two weeks of frantic work on finishing off the project, as well as more admin type work for the Bristol Biennial itself, editing text, sourcing bits and pieces for artists to use in their projects, general festival madness. Today is the first day that I have slept in since I arrived, and I am feeling quite reflective! Two weeks have slipped by in a moment, and i already feel melancholy at the thought of only 3 more remaining! Attempts to extend my flight without actually buying a whole new ticket home have so far been fruitless.

Ben Pell - Radlands

I strongly urge you all to support this project on pozible! Ben's collage work is arresting and beautiful and has never been exhibited en masse before!!

some text

Apologies for the repetition of some segments of text - I have been joggling stuff around for the entry of the Bristol Biennial catalogue.

Horror Vacui 1946 – 1986

Our family tree had been burnt to a stump. Whole branches, great networks of leaves disappeared into the sky and ground. There was no stone that marked their passage. All that was left were the fading photographs that my father kept in a yellow envelope under his desk.[1]

Horror Vacui is based on photographs of my family from the immediate post-war (WWII) period until the 1980s. I have selected images that represent a timeline spanning four decades. The timeline represents my family history post World War II, in particular, the maternal legacy passed on from grandmother, mother to daughter. Due to my family’s Jewish lineage, this history is unavoidably tainted by the traumatic legacy of war and displacement. However, this is not a work about the Holocaust, but of the long-term psychological effects of persecution. The presence of which is found not only in those who suffered directly, but is also manifest in their children and their children’s children. The images follow my family from Germany, to Tel Aviv, Paris and Melbourne. Each family member has been silhouetted; personal identity has been masked by the traumas of the past.

Following Aristotle’s statement that ‘nature abhors a vacuum’, Horror Vacui, the installation, fills the space of lack, of dismemberment, with blackness, it becomes a negative space, a shroud, an emptiness, a vacua. As a second-generation child of the holocaust, the black void is what remains for me to interpret as I try to understand my family’s history. The installation plays with the meanings of this legacy. The photographic images explore the familial relationships and identities formed around/by this abyss.

Horror Vacui evokes the threat of the vacuum, the palpable presence of absence and the necessary projection of history. For me, there represents a fascination with the emptiness (vacua), content that has not/cannot be supplied, and as such the unknown has to be represented with many layers, creating a dark accumulation of mass.

---

[1] Helen Epstein, Children of the Holocaust, G.P.Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1979

another pair

1981, Melbourne

1953, Israel

Biennial Benefit Gig (for me)

Horror Vacui, The Bristol Biennial

The theme for the first Bristol Biennial will be Storytelling, inviting participants to interpret the theme through visual arts, film and theatre. Storytelling exists in all facets of life: we tell stories and anecdotes to engage others and break down isolating barriers between individuals or groups. Storytelling can enrich our lives, it can be cathartic, it can impart wisdom or illustrate values and customs. 

Horror Vacui 1946 - 1986

This work is based on photographs of my family. In constructing this work I have selected images that represent a timeline, approx 1946 – 1986.

The timeline represents my family history post World War II, in particular the maternal legacy passed from grandmother, mother to daughter. Because of my family’s Jewish lineage, this history is unavoidably tainted by the traumatic legacy of war and displacement. The images follow my family from Germany, to Tel Aviv, Paris and Melbourne. Each family member has been silhouetted; personal identity has been masked by the traumas of the past.

The images are not presented chronologically, but are grouped according to certain echoes and visual dialogue. An example of this is the pairing of the images of my mother in Israel 1951 and Melbourne, 1976. In the first she is a young girl of 5 years celebrating the harvest festival of Sukot, the second image is in Melbourne, it is her 30^th birthday. In both images she is wearing a crown of flowers and leaves.

Horror Vacui evokes the threat of the vacuum, the palpable presence of absence and the repetition of history.

1957,  Melbourne

1986,  Perth

1982,  Canberra

1966, Melbourne

Israel 1951

nanna

Family Photos Continued

Germany

 

Israel

Australia

Family Portaits

I have been scanning lots of old family photos and slides lately. Some of them I have never seen before.
It's a strange process, discovering and rediscovering captured moments.

In the earliest photos the subjects are so aware of the presence of the camera, presumably amateur photography is still a relatively alien technology. The earliest photos are incredibly staged and posed and you get the feeling that their breath is held for the camera, however these are the most historically significant as they are documents of survival. And despite their posturing the images betray truths about their subjects and environs. The negative spaces.

Some of them show my mum as a baby in Germany, the name of the town scribbled on the back (approx 1946). In others she is walking down a dirt path between two rows of staked vegetables, she has a crown of leaves on her head and a small wicker basket in one hand. She looks like she is about five or six years old, and from this I deduce she must be in Israel. Then a handful from Paris.  Then Australia, familiar imagery of St Kilda, photos of her family infront of their house. The suburbs look like they are radiating heat, even through black and white.

The photos I like the best are from the 60's. The family had finally settled in East St Kilda, Melbourne.
There are slides of family portraits infront of large spiky palms.

The Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne

Nightsoil, Bower Gallery, September 2011

All Photographs at Bower Gallery taken by Lauren Bamford

November 2010, Masters Exhibition, Victorian College of the Arts