laconic litterings + laneway longings.

i have never lived in this city – i continue to be a transient dweller. yet each visit comes with an unexplainable sense of place. i grew up in tasmania’s natural environment. however, art and books about art coloured my everyday life. this place, for me, has always represented the synthesis of the visual arts and culture – it is a landscape that i find myself seduced by and immersed in.

hosier lane [april 2006]

i have had a long affair with laneways. but it is this city’s laneways that introduced me to what i now find irresistible. the current evolution of the laneways: the in-between. they are seductive, transient contemporary surfaces, upon which ideas are realised and created, and, very soon, these marks are swallowed by another’s ideas and creations. they comprise a cacophony of flavours, which assault the senses. it is this constant state of ‘laneway’ flux that intrigues me. each visit warrants a wandering of the inner city. as a visitor, my own occupation of the spaces changes both physically and experientially, as they evolve themselves, spatially and socially. there are many aspects to the meanings ascribed to place, including cultural, symbolic, biological, emotional and political, and these are particularly evident in the laneways.

my memories of the city, for as long as i can recall, have always been in colour. perhaps this is attributed to the artistic learning i draw from the city during each visit. i often wonder whether my memories, though, are drawn from my physical memory, or from the images i collect with my camera, and look over at a later date.

hosier lane [june 2010]

i wrote a poem some years ago. it was winter, and the morning was chilled. there was some reprieve from the weather in the under croft at federation square. while the words embody a specific moment in time – morning observations, over a cup of warming hot chocolate – the language is not dissimilar to sensations and thoughts i have with each new encounter. i ponder whether this comes from past experiences that i have retained [collected memory], from the photographs i peel over [freeze frames of a moment in time], or whether it is simply an innate familiarity that will always be with me. more recently, visits to such cities as varanasi and genova might also feed these memories and subsequent readings.

place is complex. but some places colour me.

[A Melbourne morning through a cup of hot chocolate]

The rolling screen reads Fed Square.
It’s amazing how intelligent a machine can be.
The muffin on the starch plate is chock-full of shrivelled blueberries.
The wonderful dark ink-liquid has bled through the floury flesh,
Sucking out the plumpness.
Dark blue-green.

A city repressed. Depressed.
Surrounding robots in bland suits and ties,
March through the streets,
Forgetting to live,
To breathe,
To be cheery.
Blank, monotonous. Virtual, abstract.
Colourless.

Familiar artisans -
Sidney Nolan and Rover Thomas combine with others
As large felt name-discs pressed on glass.
Behind the discs: books, far from a few -
An internal world of paper and ink.
Of colour and sensory overload.

Pick the transient Melbourne dwellers:
Those in colour; like the bookshop.
Colour.

Shops begin to wake from night’s slumber.
Electronic tolling signifies access to closed glass boxes.
Puddles of people form outside waiting doors.
Vibrant sounds escape from eager mouths.
Rampant children grow impatient.
Sheer excitement.
Movement.
Colour.

Milling colours and sounds file through open glass,
Swelling, dispersing,
Gliding towards the faceless counter.
Film-strips and ephemeral picture screens
Flash information.
Belongings, handed over to be homeless for a short moment,
Dispensed in charcoal boxes.

Time for artistic language.
Artistic learning.

[2006]