2022

Ever Evers; of “other loves and landscapes”

April 2- June 6th 2022 Bunbury Regional Art Gallery, Western Australia.

‘Ever evers’ was a drawing series , 2 years in the making, based ‘around’ The Bellview, a private shell collection located in the South West of Western Australia. The works are vector drawings – drawn and created in Adobe Draw, Capture, and Illustrator. They exist as works on paper specifically sized to the Fourth Gallery exhibition space at Bunbury Regional Art Gallery.

A big thank you went to Fox lab Fine Art Printing with their sponsorship of the printing of these works and the support of the Regional Gallery BRAG.

Transcript of EverEvers: of “other loves and landscapes” Opening speech 3rd April 2022 performed by Jenny Potts Barr and poet Miriam Wei Wei Lo.

Acknowledgement

EverEvers: of “other loves and landscapes” Opening 3rd April 2022

The title of this show belongs to a poem ‘Dialogue on the headland’ by Robert Graves.
The last line reads/says “You’ll not forget me ever, ever, ever”. And is spoken by the She of the poem. 
Its a poem about the ending of an affair, there is drama, obsession and it is set upon a headland- of green slime and crashing waves.

I grew up on headlands, there are the poets headlands, there are metaphorical headlands and I now live between two headlands. This landscape ‘type’ is also the place where the Bellview Collection of shells began with Cowie shells from Cowaramup Bay.

MWWLo to read Siren

The dolls that you see here sit along the centre display cabinet in the Bellview Shell Collection. The Bellview is the largest private shell collection in the Southern Hemisphere. These shellwork dolls became the “She” of the poem ‘Dialogue on the Headland’. They sit here in ‘shellscapes’ I constructed and drew based on the objects that surround them in the Bellview. They are not happy nor content to be Keepers or Custodians , nor willing to enable and sweep memories under carpets. There is an agreed faery tale of history being alluded to, being challenged here.

‘OOOOPs’- (point to large scale paper cut out doll)
The words on the base of the large doll are taken from historical convict records describing the appearance and nature of female convicts arriving at the Cascades Female Factory in Tasmania.The words on other doll drawings are Scottish superstitions and sayings incorporating things Nature would do to you (as a girl) if you didn’t behave yourself. 
Ophelia Mess (next to OOOooops) is based on the carpet pattern and its flowers from the Bellview’s Carpet - an Exminster design I believe- and has been abstracted to reflect the structure of John Everett Millais ‘Ophelia’ that currently hangs in the Tate. They are approx the same size (without the fancy frame).

There is only one way in and out of the Bellview and there is only one way up and down from a headland - the only other choice being death.

MWWLo to read Decoration

Overall I hope that you feel you are amidst the pages of an uncooperative coloring in book. One that is questioning its own existence and its own aesthetics, having a small existential crises.
The remaining line based works in this collection of drawings are strait up studies of the cabinets in the Bellview. 
In still life in art the theme is often one of mortality. A collection such as the Bellview lives in its own time frame. The collection beautifully mixes the aesthetically pleasing with the anomalies of ugliness and darkness. There are half coloured in pages giving the impression of abandonment, the color patches don’t have colors written below them but words from the name tags found alongside the shells in the Bellview. Words like fathoms, plonguer, night tangle nets and ‘found on…’. 

Thanks ….

Miriam to read Out From the Water. 

End.

2020

South West Times. March- April 2020 Bunbury Regional Art Gallery

2019-2020

This Hopeful Shack- exhibition held in Margaret River in March 2020 that was shut after one week due to Covid.

Below is the Prose Poem from the words in the drawings.