When I lived in Melbourne in 1990-91 I went out to Sale on the train to visit my friends Phillip and Andrea. It was about a three-hour trip. I must have been in a particularly visually suggestive mood because I saw two things that have stuck with me.
One was Loy Yang power station. I had it etched on my brain afterwards. I cranked out a series of drawings and paintings and eventually had an exhibition in 1996 of variations on the theme of a simple scene: land, sky, monolith with lit windows, and four chimneys belching steam. (It wasn’t etched in my brain very accurately because Loy Yang does not have four chimneys).
I can safely say I've got that image out of my system now. The other thing I saw was a cement mixer approaching the train line on an overpass. Its barrel was revolving as it drove along. As my carriage went under the overpass, the cement mixer passed overhead. That’s it. But … it was beautiful. It was like ballet.
I don’t have any interest in making narrative film but I have a real itch to film and animate scenes like this. It has only just occurred to me that I can literally Blutak my phone to the car window and capture reasonably smooth and useable footage for projects like this.
In 1998 I had a second exhibition of drawings and two short film clips. I shot this footage with a borrowed video camera riding in a car with Mum (North West) and in the tray of Nick’s ute (North Hobart). It's painful to recall how ignorant I was and so how work-intensive my methods were.
I feel ready to throw myself into some new experiments in movement.
No comments:
Post a Comment