The two of us

WEDNESDAY 11TH OCTOBER, 2023
Mac.Rob
350–370 Kings Way, Melbourne

Not so long ago now, it feels, but which actually was early-October, we were invited to speak about art and why we make and do the things we do, and why you all can too, as guest judges for the VCE and IB Art & Design 2023 exhibition, Look. Listen. Live., at Mac.Rob.

Here at the podium is what we read from the illuminated screen of our iPhone, before receiving a pot plant each by way of thanks; both of which are, still, thriving and green. Here, for the archivist in me, is what we said.

We met at art school (in 1994) and since then we have worked side-by-side, at first, and then collaboratively for nearly 25 years. In that time, we’ve made and released 105 artists’ book titles, 150 zines titles, lithographs, etchings, and digital prints that range in size — from postcards to entire room installations, 35 metres by 6 metres. 

We’ve lit up spaces with LED stage-lighting so that night turns to day, and day turns to night, and piped collaged recordings of Grey-headed flying fox colonies so gallery visitors can be immersed in a flying fox camp and in turn, hopefully, think about the interconnectedness of all life (in our NGV commissioned work for Melbourne Now).

We’ve explored and incorporated collections — from a charmingly, aptly petite matchbox museum in Portugal; and the Fragonard museum in Paris with its kangaroo specimens, horse jaw bones, and fibreglass models of snails at eight-times their size; to, closer to home, the exquisite Australian bird drawings of John Lewin in the collection of State Library Victoria; and the delicate and detailed Wildflowers of Melbourne watercolours by Fanny Anne Charsley, in the collection of the NGV. 

Some collections we’ve delved into in person, like the Performing Arts Collection, here, with its clown handkerchiefs and dance memorabilia, and others, like the Rijksmuseum, we know digitally, from afar, and which, incidentally, is a collagist’s honey jar. So, too, the MET.

We’ve problem-solved our way through drawing portraits of our first flying fox pups on a hard-etching ground with an embroidery pin (thanks once more in our career to the Australian Print Workshop). And we’ve learnt to print collages on lenticular acrylic so movement is incorporated into an installation (Ripples in the Open at ArtSpace, Realm) so as to encourage an audience who might not feel at home in a gallery space to enter and perhaps stay awhile.

We’ve engaged our creative minds to figure out ‘our’ ways around any problem that comes along, and found new solutions, ‘our’ own solutions. From teaching ourselves html and coding (in the days of Dreamweaver and spacing achieved by tables and nested tables to make a spacer bar) so we could build our own website in the days when blogging was big, flickr was active, and Squarespace and its kind were yet to be born; to thinking on-the-spot how best to adapt a zine-making workshop so it could work for hundreds of visitors and not just the 30 we thought would turn up. Flexibility is ever essential.

We’ve folded concertinas 5 metres long; painted the suggestion of kelp on large sheets of paper to form a wrap-around artists’ book cover (as in Dip and bob); cut thousands of components with honeybee scissors for analogue collage works (like the Salvaged Relatives series of cabinet card collages in which it is not unlikely for a sitter to wear a costume fashioned from the headdress of a Maiden in The Rite of Spring whilst a Leopard gecko rests upon their shoulder).

We’ve raised ten Grey-headed flying fox pups so they are ready for the long, green wild, and a life of pollinating our forests from here to Queensland. 

We’ve raised 14 ringtail possums from 70 grams until they are ready for release 6-months later, at 700 grams. We’ve started a soft-release ringtail possum program with the Koala Clancy Foundation. We’ve figured out how to manipulate a Bunnings chook shed to become a predator-proof possum enclosure mounted on a second-hand trailer previously used for a mobility scooter.

We have trained ourselves to focus, and be in the moment — so fully present that you forget all sense of time and space; who said it was linear? Who said it was ‘other’? — so you can hold your nerve and steady your hand as you watercolour the final hand-colouring stage of a three-colour lithograph of which there are no spare editions.

Being creative can help you to find hope in dark places; make sense of the world; centre the brain; spark thinking and conversation; and teach.

But the most important things we’ve learnt in our creative life together, side by side, has been learning to care; learning to love; learning to reciprocate with nature; learning to contribute to the things that matter to us. 

Because for us, it is not enough to enjoy being in nature, taking our fill from nature; you need to give back to and care for nature, in whatever form or way that works for you. When it comes down to it, care, love, contribution is all that has real meaning.

We all have a responsibility to make things better, and each of us will have a unique way of achieving that. Figuring out your way, your voice, is the trick, and keeping your mind nimble makes this possible. Because only you have your voice, your message, and the world desperately needs that right now.

Thank-you. 
Gracia & Louise

We awarded first prize to Lily Tran’s Shooting for Rabbits, for the Coptic-stitched brilliance of a leap of tricky rabbits from the hat, with belly band, envelope interaction, wrapped in a Solander box mystery; second prize to Catherine He’s Noombat and Woylie, for the charm and charisma of the stuffed toy to the beautiful book of ecosystems in harmony; and third prize to Suri Nguyen’s Ghost of you, for the intimacy writ large and the tenderness of the digital overlaid upon the canvas. We awarded highly commended to Anna Thomas’s Sculpted Sands, for the evocative sense of place and brilliant technique; Catherine Ho’s From Deterioration to Radiance, for the balance between hard and soft; Jacqueline Le’s In time, for the bold use of line and confidence of scale to weave “a beautiful memory”; Nimisha Kulkarni’s Journey of a consumer, for the saturation and intimacy of the everyday; Sophie Clemson’s (dys)topia, for the ambitious mirrored scale and ‘call to action’ message pertaining to the climate emergency; Natasha Surjenko’s Art Nouveau and Dada stamps, for Vermeer to Marilyn, in a snip and paste; and Amelia Ormandy’s Don’t say anything, for the blur to focus of short, sharp, sunset intensity.

Congratulations to every single person involved. And may you all keep making, and centring nature in all your decisions.

Because what any of us says and what any of us does matters, on a Tuesday or a Thursday afternoon as she slides into evening, you’ll find Louise taking part in the Melbourne vigil for the Bob Brown Foundation out the front of MMG’s head office. (“MMG, a Chinese-state owned mining company, plan to destroy 285 hectares of ancient rainforest in Tasmania’s takayna / Tarkine. They plan to flood Masked Owl breeding territory with toxic mine waste pumped from their Rosebery mine.”(source: Bob Brown Foundation))

Our defiant Melbourne community activists maintain a weekly vigil outside mining company MMG's head office. 🚨🚨

These passionate defenders are there to remind MMG that they will not accept the flooding of ancient rainforest and Masked Owl habitat for an unnecessary, archaic tailings dam. ❌

🦉 Instead, we call on MMG to revert to paste-fill technology, allowing the critically threatened Masked Owl to continue living in these magnificent forests. 🌳

You can join these defenders each Tuesday and Thursday afternoon in Southbank. Email molly@bobbrown.org.au to get involved! ✊✊🏽✊🏿

— @bobbrownfoundation

Image credit: Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison, The remaking of things, 2023, artists’ book, photographed by Tim Gresham