thewaywewearvintage albert hall 2010

I love the scalloped edge on this flapper dress
This jacket was so deliciously heavy
I wanted these shoes but they were too small, if only...



These slinky transparent chiffon dresses were gorgeous





Brooches heaven

Beautiful greens on this whimsy



There was fur everywhere
Buttons like lollipops

'Swallow' by Claire Potter - Poetry book launch Sunday 24 October 2010, 4pm at Brett Whiteley Studio, Surry Hills, Sydney

The wonderful Bob Adamson opened the launch in the amazing awe-inspiring Brett Whiteley gallery. I am reading his autobiography "Inside Out" and cannot put it down. I wish I had finished it before I heard him at the launch, although it is probably a good thing because I would have stalked him and bombarded him with 10 billion questions, or maybe would have just been shy..

Claire's softly spoken reading conjured many different feelings including love, love-lost, sadness, passion and sensuality and visual imagery including that of daffodils and birds...one would think the phallic and uber erotic Whiteley artwork as a backdrop with a 'look at me' attitude would be a distraction but for me it added to the complexity filled with double meanings and beautiful images that were already forming in my head.


A little bit about Claire Potter

http://www.poetsunion.com/node/884

Claire and Lucas Ihlein from big fag press preparing the broadsides



What others are saying:

In Swallow, Claire Potter offers a dramatic synergy between observation and feeling; literary vignettes, glasshouse musings, mythical characters and desire interweave within the haunting shadow of the swallow’s migratory absence/presence.
This debut collection is composed of four sections, beginning with the persona of a mythical sea-diver clutching seaweed in her hands, it culminates in the wing-beat of a giant kinetic bird. The poems hum with an incantatory quality; they are bites of empty sky brimming with the tension of a lightning storm. Swallow has all the sensuousness of Potter’s earlier work; her poems are beautifully wrought, resounding.

Swallow is a beautiful book. These vital poems lead the reader on from the first page to the last. Claire Potter is a born poet, expressing passion along with ideas in the ‘open field’ of her work. Her forms dance with the intelligence of her choice of imagery. Her lines, laced with flight and song, double back through the poems, then unfold extra meanings on second or third readings. Potter has drawn on Mallarmé’s idea of a book as a ‘living composition’—where each page becomes a stanza in the poem of the whole book…This is all carried off with style…vibrant sensuality moves under the controlled surfaces.
Robert Adamson

Swallow reminds us that poetry’s magic is inseparable from its risks. Potter constantly sets lyric against innovation, formal and aesthetic performance against the net of the page. These poems are highly finessed, sensate, intelligent and their alliances between strangeness and beauty, the way they yield their perceptions so keenly and with such virtuosity can only impress. Claire Potter’s work is both charged and charming.
Judith Beveridge

In Swallow Claire Potter presents us with poems that exquisitely describe not the ten thousand things of the world but her experience of those things, which is an entirely different matter. The result is that we see the world freshly because we see it as it becomes manifest to her. Experience here, though, is not the passive registration of sensual impressions; for Claire Potter it is the risk of opening oneself to danger: the danger of seeing the world differently, the danger of becoming a new person by virtue of what one writes. Here are lyrics that are at once tender and tough, careful and bold.
Kevin Hart

Title: Swallow
Author: Claire Potter

ISBN: 978-0-7340-4159-3
Format: A5 Paper Back, 82 pages
Price: $21.95
Publication Date: October 2010
Contact: Susan Fealy, susan@ramp.net.au

17th Biennale of Sydney - Cockatoo Island

I was lucky enough to work with the Sydney Biennale team for a day on Cockatoo Island, Sydney harbour, a few weeks ago. The last time I was there was for the pretty awesome Nick Cave curated festival 'All Tomorrow's Parties' in Jan 09. Cockatoo Island was the perfect venue.

Cockatoo Island






Beaches

Joel Silbersher

Nick Cave's collection of cats




The theme for the Biennale is (it is on until August) ''The Beauty of Distance: Songs of Survival in a Precarious Age''.
Among the prominent artists to exhibit are the French-American sculptor Louise Bourgeois, Paul McCarthy of the US, John Bock from Germany, Cai Guo-Qiang from New York, Isaac Julien from Britain, and Australian Fiona Hall.

Here are some photos of Berlin-based French artist Kader Attia's 'Kasbah' - an installation representing a shanty town, filling the Turbine Hall with a patchwork of corrugated iron and scrap materials.

It invites the audience to walk on the roofs, making it a somewhat interactive experience and reflects the conditions in which the majority of the population lives. In my opinion, it was a strong and effective statement by the artist.

I 'manned' this installation for a couple of hours and it was interesting to observe the reactions and behaviour of different people (children and adults). Some people just tromped and plodded along as if it was just another floor to walk on and others, mainly children, seemed to tread carefully and cautiously with a sense of contemplation...




The Biennale is worth checking out and you have to love those free ferry rides across the harbour. It is also taking place at the MCA and the Botanic Gardens.

Inspiration

I saw the documentary, VINCENT: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF VINCENT VAN GOGH, at ARC at the National Film and Sound Archive last weekend. It is a part of the NFSA's special Australian cinema screenings. It's directed by the Dutch/Australian filmmaker Paul Cox back in 1987.

I was very excited to see this as I had just finished reading 'The Yellow House' which is about the tumultuous time that Paul Gauguin and van Gogh spent together in the 'studio of the south' (the yellow house), in Arles, Southern France, in 1888.

During this time it is said that van Gogh produced his most prolific work such as the sunflowers, the chair etc..

According to the letters he wrote to his brother Theo, he was in love with the light in Arles and you can see this reflected in his work
This was a truly inspirational documentary, just to see his passion for painting and how this was enough to carry him through life, he didn't need anything else and also his love of nature and the colours - the intense chrome yellows, malachite greens, royal blues. It inspired me to capture the autumnal colours of Canberra. A bit different from southern France but still beautiful in it's own right.

Here is a quick drawing I did in my backyard to try and capture some colours and create a painting from this.

Lovely folks at Graphis have added me to their site

Graphis

New work

This is oils on board 50 x 40 cm and is available for purchase. You can contact me at caseytemby@hotmail.com if you are interested in this or any other work. Thanks x