It was a familiar pattern

Created for and exhibited as part of Unusual
11th – 29th October, 2017
Milly Sleeping
157 Elgin Street, Carlton

Coldly shining moon;
Near the ancient monastery
A wolf is howling.

Silent in the field
A butterfly was flying
Then it fell asleep. [i]

The chance to work in a different way, be it medium or material, style, or message is never to be sniffed at, tremendously appealing, and in Louise and my case, specifically, timely. Milly Sleeping recently presented us with such an opportunity, just as we were thinking of delving into projecting our work onto a different canvas.

We have dabbled in creating moving collages, thanks to the free play arena of instagram, and are keen to extend this further. We purchased a pocket-sized projector so as to take, play, and pattern surfaces beyond the printed pages of our artists' books. And so for Leah Muddle’s call to create something Unusual, we leapt at the chance to liberate from static position, the inhabitants of our artists' books within A warmed pebble in my hand et al.. The green cat as sentinel, the sleeping boy, they are all there, stowaway rooster too. Moths and birds from No longer six feet under also. From the base collage beneath Disrupted and rumpled, you can see the golden whaling ship upon the grey sea, and all to the sounds of the glockenspiel and our bathroom shower.

Please head to Milly Sleeping to see our work, It was a familiar pattern, comprised of 250 stills, looped, roaming, and projected. (You may even encounter the handsome feline Ra.)

Unusual was launched on a paradisal Saturday afternoon.

Milly Sleeping is open Wednesday through Sunday, but It was a familiar pattern will also be visible at night too. (11am to 6pm weekdays, 10am to 5pm Saturdays, and from noon until 4pm on Sundays.)

Fourteen contributing artists, ourselves included, were invited to make new works especially “for the exhibition that somehow differ from their usual practice — perhaps exploring a new form or material or technique, or exhibiting a skill that isn't what they are known for”.
Featured artists:
Alexi Freeman
Alice Hutchison
Aly Peel
Anna Varendorff
Birgetta Helmersson
Elise Sheehan
Elizabeth Yong
Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison
Katherine Bowman
Ivett Simon
Jessilla Rogers
Seb Brown
Suzan Dlouhy
Vikki Kassioras

Earlier, for Milly Sleeping,
Shoe, 2016
Ornament, 2015
Nice Work, 2013
To Good Year's End, 2012
Hidden Gems & Rough Diamonds, 2012
I Feel Fine and Borrow, 2009

[i] Andrei Tarkovsky referencing haiku within Eisenstein. “The basic element of cinema, running through it to its tiniest cells, is observation.... Eisenstein saw in these three line verses the model for how the combination of three separate elements creates something different in kind from any of them.” Andrei Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time: Reflections on the Cinema, trans. Kitty Hunter-Blair, (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994) p. 66.

Image credit: Gracia Haby and Louise Jennison, It was a familiar pattern (detail), 2017, moving collage