by Leonie Andrews

“You’re an idiot mate”

The view from my window this morning, or what we can’t see for the smoke.

I thought I might share some of our current experience with the bushfires in Australia. First up, despite the massive smoke pall we are relatively safe, here in Canberra, the nation’s capital. The nearest fire is some 50 kms away, but we are inland from the major fires burning along the southern coast of New South Wales and north of the fires burning in Victoria. The smoke is being pushed into this area by the prevailing winds.

It is horrific to hear of more deaths daily. We are unbelievably grateful to all those volunteers and professional fire-ies (yep, that’s what we call them), not just from Australia, but also from New Zealand, Canada and the USA who have given everything and stepped up. While others, not mentioning names Scott Morrison , Prime Minister, take overseas holidays.

As parliament is currently in recess, most of our politicians, except those dragged back for the security council meeting yesterday, haven’t experienced the smoke that has blanketed this city for the past month. We are on almost a daily basis superseding the hazardous air quality ratings normally associated with cities such as Dehli and Beijing (“Call that a hazardous reading …”).

Earlier this week as we drove back from visiting family interstate. Our final day was just over 400kms from the NSW/Victorian border and we drove through smoke all day.

Seen near Gundagai onThursday, this week driving from Corowa to Canberra.

Yesterday our city broke it’s all time heat record reaching 44° C or 111.2°F.

I, like many people in this city, am on edge because we experienced catastrophic fires in 2003 that left 4 people dead and destroyed 500 houses including a number in this suburb. But, like I say, we are still under no immediate threat.

Yesterday I started sewing pouches and pouch liners for injured and orphaned kangaroos and other native animals. There is not much else we can do as going outside requires particulate face masks and is strongly discouraged.

There has been so much support from people across the country and worldwide, but bugger all from our Federal Government. They were finally shamed into action yesterday, funding 4 fire bombing aircraft, amongst other things. That same request made several months ago by state emergency services, in advance of the fire season, was dismissed out of hand. To rub salt into the wound and demonstrate the level of political manipulation by this Federal Government, having finally been forced into action, they immediately released a Liberal Party advertisement boasting of what they were doing for the country. I am sickened.

If you would like to read a more eloquent assessment of the situation I can do no better than to recommend the opinion piece by Australian writer Richard Flanagan for the New York Times, Australia Is Committing Climate Suicide https://nyti.ms/2QiiBZu

The title of this blog comes from a victim of the fires at Cobargo, NSW, one of the comments made to the Prime Minister, when he attempted to “glad hand” local residents (at least this one was printable).

by Leonie Andrews

Pink

On our walk this evening we spotted this Australian native ground orchid Dipodium punctatum (Hyacinth Orchid).

Hot pink spotted petals in the evening sun.

We are bang smack in the middle of suburbia. Talk about surviving against the odds.

I love the soft pink of the tree trunk (Eucalyptus mannifera or White Brittle Gum) with the bright pink of the orchid.

Just in case there isn’t enough pink already, some of the other E. mannifera planted nearby have even a stronger colour, enhanced here by the low light of the setting sun.

by Leonie Andrews

Loungeroom Residency Inspirations

This post was rather delayed. It was meant to go with the previous posts on my Loungeroom Residency, which you can find here, here, here and here.

In this last post on my recent Loungeroom Residency I thought I would share some of the inspirations that I’m drawing on in relation to this work.

I have been to several master classes with Dr Ruth Hadlow, where a big inspiration is the impromptu library created by the participants. Everyone is asked to bring along a few books that they are interested in to create a small reference library that everyone can share for the duration of the masterclass. In this way so many different sources of ideas and images are brought together (although the downside is that I always leave with a massive list of new books to buy).

I love this book of photos of sculptures by Aglaia Konrad, which consists of a series of black and white photos of sculptures in museum collections. The only text is the list of museums where the photos were taken.

Inspired by this approach I decided to go back and take a look at the many books I have that sit unread on my bookshelves. I found several that were relevant and even just took my fancy. It doesn’t matter what gets the creative juices flowing.

A spread of pages from Aglaia Konrad’s book.

A seredipitous reinforcement for this approach came from this post by Rob Walker The Art of Noticing on Crate Digging, where DJ’s and hip-hop artists literally go through crates of old records looking for the one sound that will inspire them and throw up new ideas. Now this is not a culture that I am very familiar with but that isn’t the point.

This is vividly illustrated in a bit with DJ Shadow, talking about poring over over the surreal selection of sounds, many of them rejected or forgotten, in a record store’s basement. The important thing to remember is that this basement isn’t packed with treasure. It’s packed with junk. You have to spend the time to sort through the junk to find the treasure. There is no shortcut. There is no algorithm. There is only time, attention, noticing — digging. Shadow says:

There’s the promise in these stacks of finding something that you’re gonna use. And in fact most of my first album was built off of records pulled from here.

He talks about the “karmic” element, finding this or that by chance. (He also observes that there is something humbling about this hoard. “It’s a big pile of broken dreams, in a way,” he observes. I could write a whole separate essay on that riff, and maybe some day I will.)

One of my favourite sources of inspiration come from regular weekly posts like that from Austin Kleon. Kleon roams across different areas of art, music and stuff than I do, so it’s good to have a shortcut to see what else is going on that I might find interesting.

During my residency I also received recommendations from friends who, having seen my posts, passed on links to reading materials such as this article on Vija Cilmens and her intricate drawings. Cilmens is an artist that I wasn’t familiar with, but now I find her work popping up quite often.

Like DJ Shadow says “There is no shortcut. There is no algorithm. There is only time, attention, noticing — digging.”