In September 2018 I made this Roman breastplate for The Fool Factory for the National Museum of Australia’s exhibition Rome:City and Empire. The Caesar character was used as a living statue performer, intended to reflect the Roman statues in the exhibition. The costume also included a laurel wreath and Roman sandals.
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
(Nakiya Smith as Dinnawhan and Maitland Schnaars as Biami. Photo credit: Angie To)
For the Wiradjuri Echoes production Biami last year (see previous posts) I also made a mask and costume elements for Biami, and an emu puppet. In the creation story, Biami the creator spirit ‘created the emu Dinnawhan, the female emu, whose spirit he used to create the Wiradjuri people; who now believe they are of the egg of Biami and the female spirit’.
With a headdress (painted up by Duncan Smith) representing the five elements of the sky that he embodies – wind, lightning, thunder, rain and fog – and long soft brushing fingers, Biami’s presence was awesome!
(Photo credits: Dylan Kovacevic)
(Duncan Smith, artistic director of the Wiradjuri Echos, with Biami‘s Rainbow Serpent. Photo credit: Angie To)
I recorded some of the build for Biami, the creation story of the Wiradjuri people, this time last year, (see previous posts) but didn’t get to blog about the Rainbow Serpent until now.
The serpent was about 4 metres long, and operated with rods by four to five people. After worrying about how I could make it twist and turn enough to be truly serpentine if it was designed to have solid body, I had what I think of my ‘warhorse’ moment of inspiration (!), and decided to make it impressionistic, with a skeleton outline instead. So it was made with coiled flexible foam backing rod, and two midline connecting lines of the same material.
Then I wrapped coloured cloth around the outlines. The design was effective and light, and enabled the serpent to snake and dive sinuously over the audience, carving out the Australian landscape according to the creation story.
These masks were made for walk-about performances by The Fool Factory at the National Gallery of Australia‘s festival during the Enlighten Festival, Canberra, March 2014. They were themed to go with the NGA’s exhibition Gold and the Incas.
The owl design was suggested by a golden bead in the exhibition, while the other was based on the decorative hilt part of a small sacrificial knife known as a tumi.
I made four puppets of Australian politicians earlier this year – Abbott, Bishop, Turnbull and Hockey – for Puppet Government, an indie youtube parody series. So far four episodes have been made, with more presently in the works.
Here are some photos from making process:
Over the last few weeks I’ve been involved with the making of a giant 3 metre tall protest puppet of the Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, with the theme of Liar, liar, pants on fire. Matthew Armstrong, who came up with the concept, brought together the skills of a number of Canberra artists to make, assemble and perform the puppet within a pretty short timeframe. Thanks, too, to Dario Vacirca and Mark Timberlake from KneeHigh, now Open Space, in Adelaide who hired us the frame and advised us on various aspects.
The Abbott puppet debuted at the Bust the Budget anti-austerity rally on an icy cold day at Parliament House, Canberra, on 6th July. Matthew is now improving the puppet in a number of ways, ready for more appearances.
I made the head of the puppet from foam sheeting. Here are some photos of the process.
This is the finished emu egg prop made for Biami. The story recounts how Biami ‘created the emu Dinnawhan, the female emu, whose spirit he used to create the Wiradjuri people; who now believe they are of the egg of Biami and the female spirit’. This is symbolised by the shadow of a baby in the coolamon within.
The egg is made from Plastimake, small pellets of plastic which soften when heated and can then by modeled. I this kind of plastic at Philip Millar’s puppet doctor session at the puppetry conference in Melbourne last year, and have been itching to have a good reason to use it! Peter, who I contacted at Plastimake, was very helpful, and it turned out to be a great material for this project.
I found it quite tricky to think through the various steps in how to make this, as it had to light up from inside but be self-contained, and you have to be able to access the batteries so they can be changed.
I started by making a polystyrene egg about 20 cm long as a former. Here it is with Special Tool A, a bit of plywood with some blunt sandpaper gaffered onto it, which happens to be ideal for smoothing polystyrene once you have carved to roughly the right shape. Then I cut the egg in half lengthwise and put a bit of polypropylene in between so that I could later split the egg in half easily, and also cut away a small section at each end so that the ends would end up thick enough to hold screws to keep the two halves together.
I used small quantities of Plastimake, heated in boiling water. The pellets turn transparent when they are hot enough to fuse, and then you can fish them out with a spoon and mold them to shape. I found that squishing them together a bit with the spoon while they were still in the water was a good idea too. (The little bag of black pellets are colouring pellets of Plastimake which I didn’t end up needing).
This photo shows the egg completely covered with plastic, in various stages of setting. The opaque areas of white at the large end are set, but in other places where it is still warm you can see right through to the gladwrapped polystyrene inside. Once the egg was covered roughly, I spent quite a bit of time heating it with a hairdryer and then smoothing it out. One of the great things about Plastimake is that it can be reheated and reused, as well as added to, drilled and cut.
The egg has a flattened part for it to rest on so it doesn’t roll around, and into that I set some polypropylene sheeting with the black contact cut-out of the the baby in a coolamon. In the other half is an led light unit from the dollar shop, with it’s switch button rewired to fit into the right position poking through to the outside of the egg. I also replaced the batteries that came with the light with button batteries instead as it seemed neater, hacking a tealight battery holder so that it held two batteries rather than one. (Thanks Zaiga!)
Once the egg itself was made and joined up I paper mached the outside with white tissue paper because although paint takes well to Plastimake it can rub off fairly easily with wear. The speckled finish is spray paint and a little green acrylic paint.
I couldn’t find any fur fabric that was right, so opted for felt for covering the kangaroo mask. I was actually happy about that, (although it still leaves the question of what fabric to use for a tail), because I loved the masks using this technique that I made some years ago. I built a section into the inside of the mask that will fit the wearer’s face comfortably and firmly. There’s still quite a bit of detailing to be done on the ears, eyes and mouth.
While the mask was drying I went back to making an emu egg for the same show, Biami. I’d already made a polystyrene form for it, but had set it aside while I considered how to make it light up inside. Today I finally covered the egg in Plastimake. I’ll have some photos of the egg later as it progresses.
