Discovering the Forbidden

After reading the last post, Briony suggested that I may be heading toward the need for some splendid isolation. She was right and ... hold on a moment, I don't think you all know Briony. She's the intrepid and very professional BBC hack who was both brave and stupid enough to cover the Cannibal and Missionary Gig from start to finish. And has the collywobbles to prove it. "Professional"? What do I know of such things? Well, she was always ready to suddenly prop one of us up in front of her camera and start shooting incisive questions to which we were required to respond at once, and once only. When, however, it came to recording her "this is Briony Leyland at Williams Bay, Vanuatu" bits (I'm sure that is the technical word), she would pace up and down for an hour muttering and refining her lines, pull out her lipstick and powder, square her jaw and then do take after take after take in the search for perfection. I know this because somehow she had me leopard crawling through dog turds with the big fluffy microphone "off camera" while she flinced about in her green Mother Hubbard dress. (Drop that Look, Ms Leyland, you didn't flince. You whirled.)

Anyway, she was right. The togetherness of Cooee became overwhelming. Dawn was just breaking, I was sitting on the pavement getting some fresh air and peace from snores and farts when David sat down chummily next to me with his newspaper and proceeded to read selected reports to me. Waiting for my laundry (yes, people, I conquered a basement washing machine and tumble dryer all by myselpha and have clean clothes for Afric.... America), I was joined by Sarah who had a long and serious Conspiracy conversation with her hula hoop until Rebecca (in cellulite, denim and gauze) interrupted her: "Seerah! These mystics on the box!" "Cant yew see? Oim hevvin' a spiritchal momen'?" I got in before David this time: "Women! You can't live with them, you can't live without them. What can you do?"

Gracefully declining invitations for a seafood cook-up on the Roof or a guided insider tour of Kings Cross by Night, I slid away. Across the street to the Aussie Hotel. Double the price but half the stairs and a blessed Bed With Blanket Shower on Own. The chocolate purple and cream walls, soggy carpet smell and grumbling airconditioner are interesting but, it's BWBSoO and I enjoyed my siesta.

Oh dear, I do seem to have become rather focussed on this accommodation thing. There's more to my life than that.

Like Circular Quay. If one has to be a tourist, which one does from time to time, then this old phart in purple turtle pregnancy smock (Vanuatu - the black Carling Lager t-shirt sacrificed) has yet to find a better one in the world than that little corner of Sydney. Even in today's heat, the tourists just escaped doing that relentless "shuffle" and the Suits on the street positively preened. The harbour's beautiful, the boats even more so. I'm even warming to the Opera House. Only the Australians could make a rather ugly bridge and icon (even wearing a large AIDS ribbon) but they've managed and I'll let them get away with it.

As always in tourists spots, the buskers were working hard for little reward. I don't know why Ficus Benjaminica is learning to play the digeridoo. For the number of coins tossed, it isn't worth any more effort than the stick-basher percussionists puts in. Michael the ventrinloquist (whose wife's name is Kimberly-who-can't-take-the-sun but whose doll's name I didn't get) told me how soul-destroying it can be but that The Show Must Go On. The Holiday Inn lass invited me to "pillow fight my way to Bali with a friend" but left me alone when I started to tell her how I had no friends, other than those in Room 26 at Cooee. I sketched, was eaten alive by ants, eavesdropped and generally Isolated Splendidly for a long time.

And then ... and then I went into the Museum of Contemporary Art. And discovered Fiona Foley and her new exhibition "Forbidden". Being charitable, I'll accept Dora's SMS that she and Mike don't know this Aboriginal woman't art, even though she works from Brisbane. I hope though that they are able to remedy that soon. Her photography, painting and ... what is it called when one puts objects together in a sort of um "construction"? Artistically? Well, all of that is more than technically sound, artistically grabbing and as sharp a political commentary as I have seen. "Land Deal" comprises three walls of wonderfully placed axes, knives, mirrors, beads and blankets (dosed with smallpox and other nasties) around a spiral of flour (dosed with arsenic) - all depicting the way in which John Batman negotiated land rights from the Aborigine in 1835; but he also agreed to pay an annual rent. Two years later, the Governor of NSW declared the rental clause invalid because, he decreed, the land had been res nullius until Batman swooped. (Liz and Guy, that's different from res derelicta and I'll tell you why one day :-)). Exhibited next to "Dispersed", with its .303 cartridges, this had a big impact.

Foley's HHH1-8 (Hedonistic Honkey Haters - a series of black hooded KKK types) reminded me of Ann Gollifer's Mozambique "masks". There was another similarity in their work somewhere. Oh, yes, poppy heads v microspore. I mentioned this to the bored looking kiwi janitor, who perked up and scribbled details in her notebook. If Ann makes money from this, my hand is out for commission (and more than I get paid as a BBC soundman!).

You know that horrible stage of "white on white" that the Americans went through in the 60s/70s? Never got to me. But Nigel Milsom's "Untitled (it's held together my moving around)" is thick, oily, textured black on black (with minute splashes of green). A triptych that does hold together like that. David Lawry and Jaki Middleton defy the senses with their ghost train in "You're not thinking fourth dimensionally" (how did they know?) and I can't remember what Harvey's "As Veneral Theists Rest" looked like but, hey, great title, dude!

You're all looking bored. I'll shut up and go and see what dusk has to offer in this in-betweensy bit of Sydney where I holed up to put some sense to some of the sensations of today (the freshly squozen carrot, apple and ginger juice was certainly a sensation) and natter to you all. I know there's an "all" because people are writing to me and That's Nice.

PS: Mma Moshapa at M&K(B) has filled in the missing sound from the Vanuatu proceedings. She sent me, "lulululululululululu". :-)