EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE ALRIGHT *

Three days to assemble what always seems to contain a whole lot of  fragmented thoughts and nerves of doubt and confusion. This always happens at crunch time, some kind of weird stage-fright.  Rewriting, reworking, rethinking. How, what, when, where, and why.  Only a few more weeks after this to pull it all together. And at this point, I must say it all feels very daunting and quietly exciting. I love making this work. It consumes many hours of many days, and I still don't wake up and see the point where I want it to stop, only things I wish to develop and explore. 

 Harold, a Skull and a Rummaging Roo...

 So, about a week or two ago we went up the country to Taradale to do a weekend of shooting. If it's cold in Melbourne, it's freezing up there.  We went to see a couple of friends who live in the midst of the old gold-mining country. Across the road from their house are some woods with old mining holes, old mining gear, and enough trees and branches to confuse anyone wandering around in the pitch black of night.  We've been to Taradale in the summer, but never ventured into the snake pits I believe those woods to be at that time. So in cover of the cold, five layers of clothing and adventurous spirits we spent two nights outside discovering a world that lives right behind the darkness.

 The first night was by far the most successful. We managed to get two shots that I'm happy with, and that presents a new and slightly different mood to some of the others. Lately I have noticed that the shots are becoming darker, but not without a sense of humor.

(Rummaging Roo (working title), work in progress, © Dida 2008)

The first one, which has the working title of Rummaging Roo (as of now all the images in the series are untitled and will most likely stay that way), almost came to by itself. We came across a site in a patch of trees with a fallen tent (barely visible behind the roo), old bottles, cans and shoes left by miners way back when combined with some more recent stuff. I was told later that a girl who used to live in my friends house had gathered it all from the woods, and that it was her secret place we had found, left long ago to the mercy of the harsh bush weather. I tried not to change the site too much, but had to spread some of the stuff around that the girl had placed in and around an old milk crate just to create a little more sense of chaos. I completely fell in love with the authenticity of these old things left there and could almost sense both the miners and the girl wandering the woods with us.

 The shot was done fairly quickly. I say fairly because none of my shot can be labelled quick, but this one almost came by itself. I decided to go with the roo for a few reasons. One, we were right in roo country, and I've grown tired of the bunnies for now. Having shot it once or twice with the mask on, I decided to move it so that the face underneath became partly visible. The mask then looks directly at us whereas the man is focused on the stuff in the crate. A lot of my work contains things pointing to things out of order. Hints that can guide or confuse, a cross-section of the 'here 'and the 'there', pointing to the journey back and forth from the interior to the exterior, the borderland of reality and fantasy.

The shot, as of now, is made up of two main exposures. One is processed two different ways and then combined with a second exposure to make the final image. I wasn't all that happy with the trees in the shots I did with the roo, and ended up replacing it with one I did of just the site. Because the light is so erratic it's fairly easy to combine several exposures and almost impossible to say where one ends and the other beings.

The man in the background came spontaneously. I didn't really think he would work, but as I work on it, he's making more and more sense. He's disruptive and confusing, slightly intimidating almost. His blue is a welcome spurt of colour within all the brown, yellow and green. This shot still has a lot of work to be done, but looks promising.

(Still-life of Bird & Skull (working title), work in progress, © Dida 2008)

This shot of a bird and a skull came almost out of nowhere.  A friend had kindly lent me Harold, the taxidermy bird, which I was very excited about. I hadn't planned much not having seen the woods before other  than deciding on props to bring, so I decided to set one up just to see how good, old Harold would look in a photograph. And Harold, never the one to disappoint, did extremely well pecking away at a skull we have seen before (in the shot of the bunnies in the grass). 

I found a tree, or part of one at least,  and hung the mask so that it  would face Harold and placed him leaning into its mouth. The branch behind the mask looks like it could be holding it which I like to think might be someone just outside the image. There is something slightly disturbing about this shot I can't quite put my finger on.  It's all shot in one exposure, which is then processed differently for some segments of the image. This one also has lots of work left on it, but is definitely a keeper. As a still-life it stands out from the others, adding something else to the mix. I'm thinking Harold will re-appear down the track, or should I say Rabbit Hole... 

I'm a bit apprehensive in 'explaining'  the shots yet. Sometimes they speak of one thing, sometimes of others as I work on them. I am becoming more and more content with the balance of light and dark in the overall series, not only just through the use of light painting, but also through the variation of mood in the individual images.

With 9 images as of now, I have a lot of figuring out to do on the overall sequencing. Do I let it go 'the classical' way with an overall narrative, or do I put it together in a way that will throw people off and leave them a bit uncomfortable? And if so, how do I then do that? I am leaning more and more to the latter way (not surprisingly perhaps) thinking I might not want you to feel all that comfortable. Familiar in some ways perhaps, but not quite at ease. 

Still, with much to do and little time, moving forward. 

*Title of artwork by Martin Creed