Some time in the past I made a new type of paramontage, a type 11. See photo below showing the framed item near the centre. I’m using the photo because it was taken by a wonderful friend of mine named John who organised a get-together at my place. In fact he took this shot while the party was happening, I was elsewhere showing people around the art.
These small works of mine were printed at 28cm square and I got them framed in Alexandria at a place on O’Riordan Street in a large complex full of homewares stores, my usual framer had been incommunicado due to health problems and the floods so I went somewhere else for a change, they did a good job and I was happy with the results.
I picked up the items on 5 August and it just so happened that I drove out to see my regular framer four days later. I hung these items up on the wall on 6 August and at the same time brought down from my bedroom the James Drinkwater painting (the scary-looking one) to put above the Ari Athans. After the party one woman, named Cristina, said how much she liked the second of these works Athans trained as a geologist so has the knowledge available to her for the purpose of painting something that looks like a crystal.
Normally under the paramontages there’s a red plush chair but someone was using it when the photo was taken, the red of the chair goes with the Athans and the Drinkwater, it also goes with the couch, which is like a plum colour.
There are eight items in this small hang, one of which is different from the others. Seven of them are made with a set of photos overlayed as well as a short, 6-line poem, but there’s one with a sonnet, and this forms the impetus for my new series of paramontages, which I call type 11.
‘Bad dreams III’ is made with a photo inherited from mum, it’s one of my Dean forebears and because of how my family operates I have no idea who the subject is. This is a dismal shame but the Deans are so unfussy and unpretentious that they’d prefer to let a memory dissolve into obscurity than be accused of hubris.
The poem was written on 6 September 2013; 3, 6, 7 and 23 December 2020; 29 January 2021; 3 July 2022. It dates in its inception to a time when I was living in southeast Queensland in a small town. I would get up early in the morning – as I do nowadays – and work writing at my desk. The apartment I lived in looked over a park where in the afternoon men would come to play sport. On weekends games of rugby took place there.
Between 2013 and 2020 I dealt with my mother’s passing. In March 2014 she was diagnosed with dementia then later that year, I think it was in September, she was diagnosed with a serious blood disease. In December 2014 I moved her to a nursing home and she passed away 18 months later. Along with dealing with my own health things got in the way of me working on the poem until December 2020, at a time when I was between homes having sold my apartment. Being on the road and being virtually homeless was nothing compared to the sorrow that was associated for me with my mother.
The other photos used in ‘Bad dreams III’ include a shot of trees taken in 2010 when I took mum to visit her niece. We drove there in my Aurion and for her it was a trial, I remember on the way back to Maroochydore we stopped at Tweed Heads to stay overnight, breaking the trip into two sections, my cousin lived in New South Wales north of Newcastle.
‘Bad dreams III’
Unconscious disquiet – the proximate sound
of the waves relieves the burdens of sleep,
seeding ideas before dawn comes around.
I was wrong in some ways and harbour deep
reservations about my past conduct
so scrutinise memory for guidance.
Can yet-unformed commodities deduct
from the heavy cost of memory’s chance –
dead leaves and whirligigs of dust and sand,
silent shards of mirrors, unceasing pain,
and joy like gouts of music overland,
or pulses of moonlight, or bouts of rain?
Are they still unaware of what transpired?
Regardless, the market’s robust. You’re fired.
No comments:
Post a Comment