crone
wraps the shawl around her
in a way of sayingi’m enough –
sits in front of our block
her old bones chilled –warming now, us seeing her
knowing we want her,
the wise crone in our lives
From the category archives:
Art+Psyche
Here’s another energetic work by Kevin Meagher, from his recent show at Callan Park Gallery; a work dripping with death, time and transformation. From the Kali entry in Wikipedia:
The figure of Kali conveys death, destruction, and the consuming aspects of reality. As such, she is also a “forbidden thing”, or even death itself. In the Pancatattva ritual, the sadhaka boldly seeks to confront Kali, and thereby assimilates and transforms her into a vehicle of salvation.
Kevin Meagher
Blood Kali Change
Meagher’s work is, for me, a Yantra, a refined instrument of analysis, a conception of how Blood becomes Kevin becomes Blood, how Jesus / Kali /Venus / Mars is the facilitator for a deep and necessary internal reorganisation that must take place: a matter of life and death for the artist. Or it’s something else! Something so mysterious that we’re returned finally to the work itself as carrier of archetypal content that has no other means of exposition.
In May, Callan Park Gallery hosted an energetic exhibition of ceramics and works on paper by Kevin Meagher, an Outsider who’s been hospitalised for some time and who has developed his practice through the Pioneer Clubhouse in Balgowlah. He’s also taken an Artist in Residence role at Macquarie Hospital in North Ryde.
Kevin’s work is brimming with mythological and spiritual associations – and there is a real experience here of someone struggling to find where he fits into the vast staggering schemes of Norse, Greek, Slavic, Hindu, Christian and Egyptian myth. And the inquiry is conducted with an urgency that conveys its importance to him, and sucks the viewer in to his worlds.
(Left, Neal Hawke, and right, Ben and Tim at War.)
For me, Kevin is involved in the classic “Who Am I?” question, with a fury and commitedness brought on by obviously distressing and bewildering personal states. I love his disregard for artistic style, and also for his daring iconoclasm – I’ll post some more of his intriguing works over the next few weeks.
(Works on paper in the top image are Shiva the Bee, Jewel Tree and Super Bella; ceramics are Ra Uranus, Iris Mary, Dianna Venus, Neptune Lir and Ganga Ocean. )
Here’s the entry from my Outsider Art calender for June – and having enjoyed the work just about every day this month I can attest to its power and, somewhat surprisingly to me, its sense of serenity.
Paraphrasing from the calendar notes: “Eddie Arning grew up on his father’s farm in Germania, Texas. Bouts of depression and anger eventually culminated in an attack on his strict Lutheran mother. His hospitalisation for dementia praecox lasted for about 30 years. He was encouraged to draw by nursing staff. He was finally asked to leave his nursing home and went to live with his widowed sister, however, he never drew again.”
Eddie Arning
Woman with White Dog
Cray-Pas on paper, 63 x 48 cm (approx)
Unpacking some books from storage after our recent renovation, I chanced upon Jessie Tatlock’s Greek and Roman Mythology, a primer in the subject and a first edition from 1917. (You can find on-line, PDF and other versions of this beautiful little book here.)
The book has lots of lovely black and white photographs of statuary, friezes and vases – then (and probably still) held in a wide variety of collections. I particlarly enjoyed a small plate (Fig 42) of Cybele and her Car and was pleased to see, on a Google search, that this impresive work is still held by the Metropolitan Museum. Here she is (her “car” has now become a “cart” – makes sense in today’s language) and here is what Tatlock says of her:
Rhea, the mother of the gods,was also an earth-goddess. The people of Asia Minor knew her as Cybele or the Great Mother, and represented her crowned with a turreted crown like the wall of a city; for she was the bringer of civilization, the protectress of cities. Lions drew her chariot, and about her were the Corybantes, who acclaimed her with shouts and the clashing of cymbals, and led her worship with wild dances.
Quite a woman! And whoever the maker was, quite a sculptor! I don’t believe such a work could come into existence without that maker truly being immersed in the reality of Cybele; the Great Mother was not just a concept, rather, was a truly lived experience (that in turn energised the art-making).
So turning now to the Gulf oil spill, here’s a powerful critique of this situation by Naomi Klein:
In the arc of human history, the notion that nature is a machine for us to re-engineer at will is a relatively recent conceit. In her ground-breaking 1980 book The Death of Nature, the environmental historian Carolyn Merchant reminded readers that up until the 1600s, the Earth was alive, usually taking the form of a mother. Europeans – like indigenous people the world over – believed the planet to be a living organism, full of life-giving powers but also wrathful tempers. There were, for this reason, strong taboos against actions that would deform and desecrate “the mother”, including mining.
This, for me, is what we’ve now lost: the lived, experiential reality of the Great Mother archetype, that, if collectively experienced, could be a natural restrainer to our heroic desires for exploitation of the earth. Cybele cries out for this, and the Corybantes clash their cymbals.
(Left, another depiction of Cybele, imbued with mystery, with the living energy of the golden earth – such gold to be revered where it lies, rather than being exploited mercilessly in commerce.)
Another work in the recent exhibition at Callan Park of a selection from Pearls of Arts Project Australia, a collection of works by Arts Project Australia (APA) artists that the collector, Stuart Purves, is giving to STOARC. This one’s an energetic pastel by Leo Cussen.
Quoting from the recent Home Sweet Home exhibition blurb (National Gallery of Australia):
It is has been remarked that Cussen has a deep fascination with aspects of popular culture including the ‘Dr Who’ character from the television series of the same name and has produced a strong series of works based on this theme: ‘His work has an obsessive quality resulting from repeated use of words or phrases or in his intensive use of media. ’
I love the energetic text and the insistent working of the windows in this piece. I wanna know what’s in that tardis!
Leo Cussen
Untitled (Dr Who’s Tardis),2005
Pastel on paper, 56 x38cm
Bitten by snakes? Possibly. At the very least we can say they are slithering around… Here’s Anne Grgich’s Madam Dussa, from the Callan Park show of last November. (You can download a PDF about Anne’s Archaeologies of the Extraordinary Everyday exhibition here.)
Anne Grgich
Madam Dussa, 2009
While we’re back on the snake theme, here’s another from the Callan Park Gallery show (“Snakes”) of last November, a lovely work made from recycled materials that’s been biding its time in my blog photo folder, working it’s way in…
Janine Hilder
Snake from salty lake
More work by a blog reader: here’s a couple of Eddie Wood’s clay and mixed media snakes doing damage to a wild boar. As Eddie says in his recent comment, he’s enjoying the recent snake theme around here, and has some lovely examples of his own.
I notice that Beverly Kay has a nice post on Eddie and his work. Eddie’s snake works are really energetic sculptures, as are the ones of Christ, and both speak of the transformational – about changes of consciousness by shock, biting and astute goading.
Eddie Wood
Towering serpents fight over a wild boar with tightly coiled bodies (Detail)
One of my blog readers, Roseanne Truman, has sent me a lovely work of hers, an appropriation of an appropriation (she says), but with a delicacy that nevertheless makes it unique. Rose says:
I like making connections with ancient art and contemporary art; the discovery just happens anyway, especially looking at my friend [x]’s work. That said, it is always though his immediate environment and life experiences which are amazingly transformed in his dreams and art. He recently painted a big star on the head of a horse – I’m sure he was influenced by his landlady’s pony (he sometimes checks on it when she goes out, as it frets a bit and he has an affinity with horses). The pony has a tiny white patch under its forelock. He also painted himself riding it (he saw himself in the dream in armour)…but it is also like a mirror image and he is facing the viewer squarely. Maybe the small things influence us more than we realise.
Rose inhabits places of soul, often hidden and under-appreciated, that give life richness, for ourselves and for others. (I also think of Bachelard’s wonderful reveries.)
Roseanne Truman
Brief Moment in Time and Space
My own take on this work is as a subtle pointer to the eternity of the present moment, given due reverence and holiness by the attendant maidens, the redeeming feminine releasing us from the strictures of ego. And the delicacy of the butterfly, gently and relentlessly attracted to the sublime sweetness of this moment! I think here of Jean-Pierre De Caussade in The Sacrament of the Present Moment:
O, all you who thirst, learn that you have not far to go to find the fountain of living waters; it flows quite close to you in the present moment; therefore hasten to find it. Why, with the fountain so near, do you tire yourselves with running about after every little rill? These only increase your thirst by giving only a few drops, whereas the source is inexhaustible.
