Little Window of Opportunity

Here, there
Friday 4th – Thursday 17th November, 2016
in the window of
Port Jackson Press Gallery

In tandem to work on our artists’ book, Prattle, Scoop, Trembling: a flutter of Australian birds, we have been making new work for Here, there, as part of Port Jackson Press Gallery’s Little Window of Opportunity. Several Betwixt inhabitants will be joining the line-up.

As the zebra's stripes dry, press on.

Here, there
Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison

Twins, collaged and drawn, down to the last stripe on their tail tips or hooked nip on their talons. Covered with wild hair and shiny feathers, two things of the same appearance and size. Placed together they form a twosome, equal in origin. Yoked puzzle pieces of a whole, reconfiguring their second home, erasing the mistakes of the first. In pencil, they correct the lines. This looks right. This looks closer to natural.

Or is it the other way around? Is it the pencilled form who follows the collaged to a new island fashioned from a discarded carte de visite. To a manmade world cut by scissors and buried beneath heavy drapery.

Whichever came first, Salvaged Relatives either way. Matched and inseparable, like,
a pair of straight lines
a pair of intersecting planes
a pair of adjacent complimentary angles

a pair of aces — lucky that
a pair of ragged claws
a pair of plums, pants, wings, and odd ducks

a pair of (honeybee) scissors
a pair of brown eyes
a pair of brown eyes lyrics

a pair of silk stockings
a pair of glasses
a pair of star-cross’d lovers

a pair of scissors is what kind of machine
a pair of shoes — here’s to you, Vincent van Gogh

(Courtesy of Google’s drop down search poetry on a spring afternoon)

Here, there, always together. Whether paired human and animal, front and back, collage and drawing, or collage and print: a perfect pair.

Port Jackson Press Gallery
84 Smith Street, Collingwood

Image credit: Collages on cartes de visite (shown paired, front and back) with pencil and paint additions by Gracia Haby

(Related LWOO exhibitions at Port Jackson Press Gallery: Not Quite Sure, 2014; Charms of the Gloaming, 2012)