environment

Glimpses of a Seabird Flying Blind

Posted by hil

I’m really happy and excited that my first gallery exhibition, Glimpses of a Seabird Flying Blind is opening tomorrow, 23 March at the Pinnacles Gallery in Townsville, continuing through to 29 April! It represents almost a year of work, and a new direction for me. The work falls into several groups – The Piano Creatures, The Big Fish (Evangeline), the Shells and Cocoons, and the Secret Cabal of Elders, as well as a few other creatures in an imagined world:

On an imagined shoreline we see disruptions in the natural world. In the shallows are the ghosts of former shells, fragile and colonized or fossilized by synthetic substances. The Piano Creatures, evolved from the driftwood mechanisms of discarded instruments, pick their way across the sands carrying the promise of music and hope. In the deepest ocean a sightless blob fish sucks for sustenance and in the limitless sky the hollow-boned birds continue their daily feat of survival in newly changing times.

The patterns of disruption follow the age-old evolutionary law: diversify, select, adapt. The process is dynamic, relentless, wonderful and dispassionate; and acutely responsive to the footprint of humanity.

Using her experience in making puppets and sculptural forms, and interests in new materials and technologies, Hilary Talbot has created some of the inhabitants of this imagined future as a meditation on the tensions and challenges faced by society now.

I’d love you to drop in and see it if you happen to be up Townsville way in the next five weeks!

A huge thank you to my family, friends and colleagues for all their support, encouragement and enthusiasm and skills in helping me get this up, in particular to Anna Raupach, Tim Raupach, Alex Raupach, Wendy Quinn, Lelde Vitols, Lisa Styles, Imogen Keen, Robyn Campbell, Elizabeth Paterson, Bev Hogg, barb barnett, Chris Hahn, Steve Crossley, Caroline Stacey, Joe O’Connor, and the Pinnacles Gallery team.

Piano Creature No.3. Piano mechanisms, balsa wood, paper mache; 55cm x 56cm x 60cm; 2010

Piano Creature No.6. Piano mechanisms, buckram, paper, cardboard; 50cm x 50cm x 47cm; 2010

The Big Fish (Evangeline) Head detail.  Photograph by Anna Madeleine 2018

The Burden of Stuff No.1. Plaster, foam sheet, acrylic paint, fabric, styrene, recycled wire frame. 68cm x 40cm x 30cm. 2010

Cocoon No.2, Milk bottle plastic; 120cm x 43cm x 32cm; 2016. Photograph by Lisa Styles

Whelk Shell (Fragility). Tissue paper, plaster 90cm x 50cm x 30cm.  2008

Cowry (Paper Thin). Tissue paper, foil, masking tape; 75cm x 45cm x 30cm. 2017

Turtle Shell Sheild (False Promises), PLA plastic filament, wish stones; 60cm x 58cm x 12cm.  2017

Turtle Shell (Moon and Constellations), PLA plastic filament, tissue paper, foil, masking tape; 57cm x 58cm x 12cm. 2017

Wonders of the Deep. PLA plastic filament, recycled sushi fish bottles, fishing line 100cm x 50cm x 45cm. 2017

The Secret Cabal of Elders. Hand puppets. Balsa wood, tissue paper mache, fur fabric, reclaimed decorations. 2017

A fat chance – UNLESS

Posted by hil

The Lorax

 

The story of the commercial tie-ins to the movie adaptation of Dr. Suess’s book The Lorax is completely dispiriting. Boycot it all.

Jesus lives, though not the trees

Posted by hil

My flight path into Adelaide yesterday went over the area where the once mighty River Murray now trickles into Lake Alexandrina and the sea, and where an ecological disaster has been unfolding over the past decade of drought. Ironically, only minutes further on I saw this  ‘Jesus lives‘ spelt out by lopping down trees. Join the dots, people.

Then I was delighted to glimpse of a large teddy bear on a bicycle on the grass between the Adelaide Airport runways as we landed! Apparently his name is Buck, he’s been around for 27 years, and his attire changes every now and then to reflect local interests. This time he was celebrating the Tour Down Under which took place in January.

Bird skeleton

Posted by hil

Seagull skeleton

This suggestion of a seagull skeleton is a prop for a new play I’m working on, but I rather like it as an object for itself. It’s given me some ideas for making some stranger ones when I get some time later.

By coincidence, today I happened across Chris Jordan’s photographic collection Midway: Message form the Gyre, a photographic documentation how albatross chicks on Midway Atoll ban in the middle of the Pacific Ocean often die because they end up being fed heaps of plastic junk. It’s shocking – only look if you are feeling strong.

Penguin masks and earth hour

Posted by hil

penguin masks

These penguin masks, being worn outside the UN Framework of Climate Change Conference in Bali last November, interested me because I liked the way the coarse gauze was so effective, while not hiding the faces. The photo is taken from our newspaper at the time, via Associated Press.

I’ve always thought a cool way of making a penguin character would be to have a head mask, but then wear a tuxedo as the rest of the costume, letting people make the penguin suit connection themselves. However no-one has ever taken me up on the suggestion!

We turned our lights off for Earth Hour tonight. It was a beautiful clear starry night.

FlickrFan for funerals?

Posted by hil

These days images are often shown at funerals. It is usually grainy old family photos looping on a roll-down portable screen. Imagine, instead, the church having a HDTV, and that you can stream chosen image feeds to it from your computer. If family and friends wanted to, they could contribute feeds that would become part of the source material for the screen display. This is one great use I can see for Dave Winer’s new product,  FlickrFan.

Used in a more private setting, its easy to see it being useful for family photo viewing and so on. I have reservations about it being used as a way to provide an ambience in one’s living room. I find image (and especially moving image) too arresting to treat as part of the background in a social situation, unless I’m inured to the footage. So it might either highjack conversation, or at the other extreme become like muzak. I also worry if it will be pitched by some as a great solution to having an acre of black flat screen in your lounge.  I think those big flat screens chew up a lot of energy, and to have them running a screen saver all the time only increases the energy usage. As far as the planet is concerned we have to be learning to turn things off more, rather than keeping them on in the background.

Walk against warming

Posted by hil

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The Walk against Warming on Sunday drew about 9000 people in Canberra. It felt substantially bigger than last year. As yet neither of the major parties are addressing the issue with the seriousness it deserves, which has surprised me in a way. I thought it might be the clincher issue for a Labor victory. The tubeman above was at the side of the crowd, encouraging us to keep industrial relations rights in mind when we vote. This puppet was perhaps, but not conclusively, a John Howard?

I had some fun looking at Flickr for other WaW puppets. By far the most interesting to me were four big puppets at the Adelaide walk: Al Gore, Albert Einstein, Vandana Shiva, and Mikhail Gorbachev. I’d like to know who made them. Here is a selection of others:

Green things

Posted by hil

Earth2tech

I’m taken with this lovely leaf logo which belongs to a new green blog Earth2Tech (a new part of the GigaOm blog network) which will focus on the business side of green and clean technology.

And check out the cool Power of Wind ad produced by Nordpol+ Hamburg for EPURON, a renewable energy company based in Germany.

(via Laughing Squid)