Today was the opening of the Flesh After Fifty exhibition at the Abbotsford Convent, subtitled - Changing images of older women in art.
Having just opened its doors to the public, there weren’t many people wandering the capacious rooms. It was a perfect place to be on a hot Melbourne day, large spaces with high ceilings, walls & floors that bear the patina of age with dignity within the bones of the graceful Abbotsford Convent compound. A perfect metaphor for the current exhibit.
I was examining the series of black & white photos by Ponch Hawkes depicting woman sans clothing though frequently wearing or carrying an item that concealed their identity. The hundreds of photos of women over 50 embodied play, joy, & complete comfort in their own skin.
A woman approached me and told me she’d heard me on the radio talking about MG and how she’d been moved by the fact that my reminiscence was echoed in other people’s memories of him. We got into conversation, she told me about her family, her mother’s deteriorating health & her grandfather’s story of concealing Jews on their farm in Florina, Greece, in a strategically concealed underground dugout beneath a pig pen. In the course of a far ranging conversation my new acquaintance tells me she is a visual artist, born in Greece, has just become a grandmother & was approached by Ponch to have her photo included on the gallery wall in front of us; “I was nervous to accept.” “But did you do it?” I asked “Yes, would you like to see, this way”. She pointed to herself standing legs strong, straight & together, arms extended toward the camera in what could only be interpreted as a gesture of loving welcome. Despite the fabric concealing her face I could see her body language was one big smile.
Thank you Elizabeth for sharing yourself so magnanimously. You are beautiful.
Happy New Year to the faithful & the unfaithful, to the movers & the shakers, the sad & lonely, to those who get it done & those who want it done. May you appreciate this is all a gift that one day is taken away and passed on like a baton in a relay that you wish could be held onto just a little bit longer. xx
From 1999 a rarity called Happy New Year. By the time New Year rolled around in 1999/2000 we were in hospital with a one day old baby girl, our third. We briefly wished each other a happy one and then went back to our dreaming.
From Paul Kelly’s self-described ‘mongrel memoir’ ‘How To Make Gravy’ pg 139-140
"Everybody Wants To Touch Me’ is sometimes read as a riff on celebrity. That seems to be Sydney cabaret singer Paul Capsis’s take on it on his album of the same name. Medusa-haired Deborah Conway, Melbourne singer-songwriter and mother of three, knows a little about celebrity and pregnancy both. She fronted a band called Do-Re-Mi in the eighties and had a big hit with a song called ‘Man Overboard’, featuring the memorable lines ‘Your pubic hairs on my pillow, your stubble rings the sink.’ Her shapely posterior was also famous, full-framed and proudly bare on big Bluegrass Jeans billboards nationwide, with the tagline ‘Get yours into Bluegrass’.
Do-Re-Mi functioned as a collective - a shaky construct in pop music at the best of times - and used language such as ‘ideologically unsound’ (the predecessor of ‘politically incorrect’) in their band meetings. Deborah, with her ...
Antarctica, destination of majesty, of mystery, of dreamlike otherworldliness; the air so clear you could see the future. Our nights rocked by the seas, our days filled with light, colour, wildlife, adventure.
And no internet! For 11 whole days the world could not intrude.
Thanks @Chimu & @Intrepid
Back in Australia with almost enough days to recover from jet lag before the next stop - Israel.
