laps and rainbows

yesterday i went to the pool. it was the first time i'd been in years. i spent a long time there, just sitting and watching the swimmers. it was a really fine day and the pool seemed quite busy for the middle of the day. i've decided it's time for me to have a small rest from life and not feel guilty about not doing a lot in a day, if i feel that's what i need right now, just to give myself some space. also I've found that doing certain activities in the middle of the day is a very different experience to doing things when everybody else is finished work and also doing them. like, going for a swim, doing grocery shopping, going to see a movie... it's interesting.

anyway, so i bought a pair of goggles and did some laps in the slow lane. my body had to re-teach itself how to swim properly again, like i said, it's been years. but of course, those skills are innate, it took seconds. what i liked about it was the repetitive nature of it, just stroke after stroke, lap after lap, it's very calming and non-taxing on your brain. i also, ironically, got really thirsty and had no water.

swimming like this reminded me of the Matthew Ngui artwork at the John Curtin Gallery for the BEAP festival a couple of years ago. it was a piece that had stuck with me, I really enjoyed it, maybe because of the long dark room with a big calming blue screen of water, a bit like going into an aquarium, something I'm also very interested in lately.

Matthew Ngui, Swimming: at least 8 points of view, digital video/sound

because it was such a nice day the sun reflected through the water and i was struck by how much that aesthetic embodied a lot of what i'm interested in, visually, in my art practice. i know it's quite simple, but i'm really drawn to pure light, which leads, subsequently, to colour. and water, as i noticed while swimming, interacts beautifully with light, producing the most natural arrangement of colours, the spectrum. little rainbows, everywhere. nothing especially profound, but how often do we really allow ourselves to appreciate how nice simple light interaction is?

I found this here, it's by an artist called Andy Gilmore, who also appears to be all about the spectrummmmmmm.

dRaw

I've got some work in this exhibition, it opens tonight. more info here

easter weekend

a new awareness, and strange succession of things. quiet good friday, quiet streets, walking through a silent still suburbia in the hot sun, those weird naked white trees that look like nude hairless appendages, long long bodies with folds of skin in the creases. the most public of all public holidays. talking on the phone with relatives - vaguely, distant conversation. i try to end it quickly, it is tiring. saturday night at a party. we don't really talk to anyone much. it's fine like this. not that we don't know anyone but it seems unnecessary to make conversation. we hang out in the disco room, the laser light is really cool, when you stand in it's beams, it feels like they're tickling your face, eating your face, a strange sensation. we go home, and after googling "how to roll a cigarette", we smoke. the house is ours. i assemble a quick playlist, which turns out to be perfect. funny how that happens. we fall into a deep quiet. "i feel really light" he says. i say, "i feel really heavy". we mean the same thing. then sleep. easter sunday, a strange mix of friends, family, traditions, feeling homely, a quiet night at work. that night we smoke a little more and watch twin peaks. i am heavy again and notice myself drifting, things slipping. it's ok. reading murakami puts me into an even more hallucinatory mood. today it's overcast, stormy. it smells like rain, the world is tapping by. we listen to In Rainbows. drums and cymbols, ping pong balls. i remember the dream i had last night. of all my clothes being for sale, and people buying all my favourite ones, and me, regrettably, selling them and feeling conflicted. everything is, as far as i can tell, real and happening.

blog art

i'm meant to be researching residencies, but got disheartened when i read IASKA is not accepting any more applications due to "revising our artist in residence program"

and then i got distracted by looking at the plethora of online material published by and on Lucas Ilhein. he did a residency in Milan (on a development grant from Australia Council) and made this website which has some really really nice things on it. i think he has said this is like his pre-cursor to the blog-art he has more recently been doing, since the technology was not available back in 2000 when he made it. but it's great, i urge you to spend some time on it. obviously, i am particularly drawn to it because there is some italian floating around on the website, and that's always exciting. there's also german and cantonese, so, you know, multi-cultural...

anyway, looking at Lucas' stuff makes me feel like I need to get a whip-snap onto things and make this residency happen. we need it!

some huge, cosmic love.

"Sometimes, when one is moving silently through such an utterly desolate landscape, an overwhelming hallucination can cause one to feel that oneself, as an individual human being, is slowly unravelling. The surrounding space is so vast that it becomes more and more difficult to keep a balanced grip on one's own being. I wonder if I am making myself clear? The mind expands to fill the entire landscape, becoming so diffuse in the process that one loses the ability to keep it fastened to the physical self."
(Murakami - The Wind Up Bird Chronicle)