Summer Love (install detail) 2018-19, featuring poems written in response to
works from the Wollongong Gallery collection
Summer Love
Wollongong Art Gallery
15 December 2018 - 3 March 2019
Curated by Louise Brand
Celebrating the gallery’s 40th year
Bikinis, beaches, barbeques and all things sun-drenched and hot, hot, hot! Works from the collection sizzle over the summer months in an exhibition that will have you reaching for the nearest ice cream!
Suite of ten poems written in response to work from the permanent collection, including impressions, personal memories and anecdotes.
Installation view featuring Max Dupain, Sunbaker, 1936, silver gelatin print, 38 x 43.5cm
come on shed that thing you’re
wrapped in dive in begin again skin
is our largest organ like a heart
worn not on a sleeve but under
cells replacing themselves so we
are made remade made again
over and over impermanent
membranes permeated by sunlight
sunscreen toxic chemicals love
skin thin devastatingly human undressed
peeled back laid bare laid out sodden
a sleeping seal on concrete incubating
heat beneath a midday sun by the
municipal pool the year you turn
thirteen you peddle across town
barely covered not bothered skirt
riding up high racing friends to be
most sun kissed golden wearing
matching sterling silver rings
crisscrossed interwoven strands
conjoined imagined futures until
that day it must be cut you are
severed your finger grown too wide
leaving an imprint circumscribing
your body circumnavigating the world
skin once containing you now discarded
it could only hold you for so long
Written in response to Grace Cossington Smith, ‘Sea at Thirroul’ circa 1935
oil on cardboard on composition board, 36 x 47cm
a day between the wars when you
are pushing form beyond even
your own limitation which let’s face it
you have never really felt but are perhaps
aware of as a whoosh a funnelling sonic
sound too remote to heed attention
you set up at the beach it’s the horizon
you’ve your eye on truncated not by
vision or imagination but the edge
of your board a painting neatly defined
to capture an essence some part of
a greater whole lifting you toward
transcendence while all about children
cheer cry out race rush ambush slip
dip dive arrive the spirit of delight
the horizon laps against your feet
washed by waves marked in black
lines filled with green marine turquoise
aqua the sand yellow peach beach
white nothing emptiness as if
part way through you lay down
brush are gripped your thoughts
eclipsed pulled up out of memory to
stand among bold bodies trunks legs
crunch of golden silica underfoot
lead by hand heart skipping a beat
stripped down bare bones discarded
clothes like skin you dive in painting
unfinished later you sign anyway
it’s done.
Summer Love (install detail) 2018-19, featuring poems written in response
flavour encompasses the senses
a synaesthesia experiential experimental
exponential a mishmash smell with texture
with sight with sound they say – yes – it’s the
they who say we don’t actually have a sense
of flavour not really we taste things because
we smell them first and without a sense of smell
we’d only taste sweet or sour which is perhaps why
when you’re a child things are either yuck or yum
like neapolitan ice-cream in a bowl melting down
the sides of a cone faster than your tongue can lick
to catch the drips mangos bursting golden ripe
porcupine skins on holidays in Queensland and
why when weaving through asphalt streets in the
heat of summer at the back of Erskineville when
in your early twenties you taste rather than smell
jasmine and frangipani and by following it’s thread
will always find your way home and decades later
when these flavours wend their way into your senses
in spring and summer you are twenty again and
not a day has gone by
Installation view featuring Peter Kingston, Austinmer Beach – Australia Day, 2009
oil on canvas, 110 x 140cm
there are days when the substance of
water is not watery at all it’s oily slick
thick steely metallic more like mercury
than anything else slipping through fingers
seeking nose-diving quicksilver like lightning
or the Roman deity messenger of the Gods
and on those days astride your board the
ocean swell rising and falling rising and falling
you can imagine being not separate but of it
you and the ocean engaged in an endless dance
of push and pull push and pull with the moon
that great magnetised orb suspended in the sky
alongside it’s sibling once removed mercury
the three of you now in cahoots with all
the elements of the periodic table planets
stars and solar systems to which you were
introduced at school but learned little
rarely were you listening the sound
of the surf too loud
Written in response to Max Dupain, Era beach, (three beach goers carrying picnic) &
Era beach, (sheds and beer bottles) 1957, silver gelatin prints, 26 x 27cm; 26.5 x 26.5cm
those days you’d pack a car
and skip the small distance to
the national park slipping work
routine responsibility city rush
with friends you glide down tracks
beaten smooth over hillocks and rises
a jaunty dash to a shanty strewn beach
white green blue and yellow shacks
built during the depression from poles
driftwood galvanised iron some almost
half a century old already existing outside
time leapfrogging decades gossip politics
convention sidestepping intention of
bureaucrats opportunists demolition
you talk of poetry long rambling rants
about cultural rebellion sipping beer
long necks discarded on a pile carried
out after and all of this is glimpsed on
land belonging tens of thousands of
years to the Dharawal people framed
in passing by a photographer then
written about another sixty or
so years hence
Written in response to Emanuel Phillips Fox, Moonrise, Stanwell Park, NSW circa 1914
oil on canvas, 38 x 45.5cm
as the yard arm slips tipping toward
the end of day sun and moon held
by mesmerised magnetised opposites
ever enthralled each chasing the other
hot on the heels of infatuation longing
lust love loss of light into dark into
light into dark equidistant apart
butter moon whispers then booms
cracks crackles rips open the eastern sky
sun aches as it dips toward dawn gone
to the other side of the world
you set easel against the evening
grass hills rocky escarpment you wait
in the fading light anticipate block in
colour shape outline detail comes later
broad brushstrokes running to rivulets
pacing your own merry dance as
dark encroaches with barely enough
time to cut in that line where sea and the
infinite meet flashing blue pink orange
land a silhouette hasty strokes thinning
chasing your tail back to the start
stuffing brushes board easel hat coat
notes bundling bags one final glance
pace up the hill to the train paint
still wet it rubs off on your clothes
Summer Love (install detail) 2018-19, featuring poems written in response
I have heard the mermaids singing
a lament to chill the spine salt and
freshwater alchemical tricksy fluid
luring transcendental hardly possible
free form verse poem blown sky high
shape-shifting jazz riffing cross dressing
cultures centuries crisscrossing pollinating
mythologies told retold now I’m telling
you again you have heard the mermaids
singing their voices are not loud the poem
a film a book and look they’re swimming
laps in the ocean pool with the winter club
all men girls are not allowed don’t shout
they’ll be thrown out grab your tail quick
and join them it’s hanging by the door
mermaiding you must’ve heard is the
new thing safety concerns ignored so
take your mark get set and go sink
then swim then sing the siren chord
quicksilver you are of it found your
place among the mythic you could
hardly miss it
Written in response to Fiona Macdonald, Local Studies 6: Meeting on the Beach 2009
watercolour on archival paper, 73 x 53cm (right hand side of image)
stand up stand against stand with
three pillars totems men in suits
interlopers in the littoral zone ill-fitting
spectral presences falling the way of
cedar trees stripped by early colonialists
though they don’t know it yet on a day like
this beneath a broiling sky simmering molten
lava underfoot melting soles the day spills
open like fallen fruit
Written partly in response to Arja Valimaki, Meripelko 1999
abalone shells, jute, twine, hessian, copper telephone wire 242 x 137 cm
to gather together on a beach or city park
in a field of sun-bleached grasses calls of
sea gulls and of children loud kiss of bat and ball
gathering together to collect flock amass redress
the swell of voices rising in protest and in song you
gather up your skirts chairs and ancestors in frames
piled high on ships deck sailing to a distinct distant land
to walk along the beach front gathering coal pebbles
glass and shells in that liminal littoral zone where sea
and land collude later in the studio you lay out these finds
arranging making sense of creating order structure beauty
measuring life in abalone you make an armoury of skirt
to pitch against vicissitudes at the underside of the world
now you gather close your child your beach finds your
new life feet planted deep this country quiet washing
of the surf collecting sieving sorting you have
fixed yourself in place
Summer Love (install detail) 2018-19, featuring poems written in response
loose unravelling midday bleeding to
afternoon then tipping a circular breath
he closes up shop flicks blinds shut pushes
one final customer onto the street door thuds
you’re bereft on the step illuminated overexposed
you throw up a hand to block out the light hair
drops over eyes you fall in behind slipstream
shadow of dog and rush on home take
stiff towels off the line