Poems in Cordite

Cordite 36: Electronica is now online and available for your viewing pleasure at:

http://cordite.org.au/electronica/
Look out for my two poems "Animal Light" and "We Are Called"

I am currently working on a commission for The Red Room Company for their Clubs & Societies project. I will be reading at The Queensland Poetry Festival 27 August at 10.30am, Theatre Space Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts 420 Brunswick St, Fortitude Valley.

I will be reading at:
Readings Carlton
309 Lygon Street, Carlton VIC 3053 (03) 9347 6633 ‎
on 11 July 2011 at 6.30pm


Pages + Poetry is Readings Carlton's monthly poetry night. It happens on the second Monday night of the month and is curated by Melbourne poet, Luke Beesley.

There will be wine, and we start 630pm sharp ...myself and...

Petra White is a Melbourne poet. Her first book, The Incoming Tide, John Leonard Press (2007) was shortlisted for a Queensland Premier’s Prize. Her second book, The Simplified World (2010), was joint winner of the Grace Leven Prize for Poetry.

Jamie King-Holden lives in Geelong and studies literature at Deakin University. Her first book of poetry, 'Chemistry' was published by Whitmore press (2011). Jamie co-edits the literary zine 'Windmills.

Happily Ever After

altered book 'The Red Shoes/Dance of Death' on show at the John Paynter Gallery in Newcastle, NSW

Brisbane Floods

I flew into Brisbane on Sunday 9 January after three weeks in Britain. The pilot on our descent said the weather was not good. It wasn't raining as I got out of the terminal but the humidity hit me like a torpid wall. On Monday, I was just glad to be home. Jetlagged and needing to go to work early the next morning, I went to bed, unaware of the seven billion tonnes of water that had fallen in 72 hours...
to read more: London Review of Books.

Big Print in Canberra

Congratulations to Ampersand Duck and byrd for their work on Big Print. See images here. It is wonderful to see words from my Notes to Architects being used in the installation BIG PRINT, Megalo @ the Fitters Workshop, Kingston (Canberra ACT). Large scale printworks by 8 artists. Open 15-17 October 2010.

Vario Exhibtion at Bay Art Cardiff, Wales

While I was in Cardiff recently I was privileged to attend the opening of an exhibition of Vario at Bay Art. The Folio is an International collaboration between printmakers in Hawaii, USA, Virtually-6 printmaker’s in Wales, UK and Southern Highland Printmakers and Impress Printmaker’s in Australia. The exhibition also showed work by The V-6 print group (Cardiff, Wales) Annie Giles Hobbs, Sue Hunt Tom Piper, (all pictured), and Richard Cox, Chris Lloyd and by David Ferry A.R.E. The Cardiff Vario connection has put in a proposal to IMPACT 7 to be held in Melbourne Australia in November 2011 for an exhibition of the Vario portfolio.

Practicum on an Idealised Landscape

‘Practicum on an Idealised Landscape’ is a recent look at landscape. Thinking about different greens in watercolour, that whole watercolour landscape tradition and the nostalgic country names that are given to commercial green paints. My father was a watercolourist, who trained at Winchester School of Art just after WWII and exhibited with the South Wales Arts Society. He and my mother now live in a garden village, the idealised movement that flowered with Utopian Socialism and the Arts & Crafts movement. The village they live in has strict rules, due to Grade2 listing, about what can and can’t be done to the fabric of the buildings, including carefully prescribed colours of house paint. On a recent visit in September 2010 I documented the different greens on the garage doors as people do what they want while nodding in direction of these rules. The result is an artist book presented in the form of a slideshow '60 shades of green' that is presented with a poem I have been writing about Actaeon and the forest: our green youth when we enter the forest and look upon the embodiment of Love. The subjects of the work, artist book and poem, are therefore not just idealised landscape and the mythos of Youth, but also by inference ageing, which has come in this instance from thinking about my father as he was, and is.

review of Views of the Hudson in Jacket 40

wax drawings

I've been in the studio working on some wax drawings - using the tjanting to draw as a resist.

The Curious Collector exhibition

Artist Book - Featherweight

The weight of a soul is the weight of a feather. Visible through the poem (a cover or title page) are the five blank pages, made of fine cotton lawn, that comprise the artist’s book. The poem Featherweight was written for the project by the artist and poet Angela Gardner. Featherweight is published by light-trap press in a limited signed edition of five. Featherweight will be shown as part of Barratt Galleries Hankie project.

Lisa, Gwenn and I also held a workshop at Umbrella studios.

Night Ladder at Umbrella Studio Townsville

Night Ladder Exhibition at Umbrella Studio Townsville where Marg Naylor, Public Programs Co-ordinator at Perc Tucker Regional Gallery talking with Gwenn Tasker and Lisa Pullen at the Opening of The Night Ladder exhibition.

Yogjakarta

Just back in Australia after ten days in Indonesia. First two days were spent cross-legged on a rattan mat in a batik studio learning traditional batik methods using beeswax and a tjanting (pictured). While staying in Yogjakarta went to see the Ramayana performed in traditional Javanese style and was mesmerised... Indonesia is truly an amazing place from being woken at 4.30am by the call to prayer, the shoals of motorbikes on the streets, Borobodur (pictured), traditional dancing at the sultan's palace (pictured) to drinking ginger tea and more tofu than I have ever had in my life...oh and durian....that is a whole other story...

Highgate Cemetery

one of my top weird things to do in London.

Small Publisher's Book Fair London

light-trap press recently had a stand at the 9th International Small Publisher's Book Fair London. We were able to show twelve labours, The Night Ladder and holding Job's hand to the many people who visited our stand.

Up coming events

Poetry Reading:


National Library of Wales Aberystwyth with Keri Finlayson lunchtime 10 November

Date: Wednesday 11 November
Venue: Menzies Centre, Australia Centre, Corner Strand and Melbourne Place, London
WC2B 4LG
Cost: Free
Please rsvp to frank.bongiorno@kcl.ac.uk for details

light-trap press will have a stand at the London Small Publisher's Fair ... 13/14 November. Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1 (tube: Holborn) Main Hall, open 11am – 7pm. Admission free. Readings (including one by Angela Gardner) 14th Nov afternoon.

Current drawing project at UWIC

I've been working in the studio at UWIC School of Art...exploring the sensory and graphic elements of the written as visual language dislocated from the sign-specific meaning of words themselves. This is seeing whether theories that originated in linguistics such as Julia Kristeva’s argument for the materiality of language through the gesture of writing have a correlation in visual language. I've also been thinking about Derrida’s absent/presence narrative and the silence of spaces whether it can be interpreted as the artworld’s ‘negative space’. How do writing and drawing relate to each other? Obviously I have a lot to learn about linguistics but thinking about how these concepts translate in the studio is proving very interesting. Drawings in the sequence are currently titled "Out of Sight (of thought)" Drawings are in unfinished works in progress.