Poems extend into the rain rattled
weekend. From Thursday the days and nights have spun with poem inspired talk, performances, thoughts and hugs.
Ms Tamryn Bennett, who works with us in The Red Room as creator of our hand held object series, recently launched an art and poem exhibition at Blank Space Gallery, on Oxford Street.
(Readers visit with umbrellas today or sun hats tomorrow).
Rain hadn’t begun on the exhibition’s opening night so bare arms and hair flowers filled the tiniest of rooms. My elbows and neck were sock cosy and scarf loved but it seemed all other viewers felt naked and nude most responsive to the spring chill.
Along the gallery walls were art and sculptures made in response to to the Tamryn’s theme: ‘Seventeen Summers of Heidiko Jones. The images, that included dreams, nightmares, desires and memories of the invented Heidiko as this character, over time, wakes from a concept and walks, runs and rejoices as a breathing real identity constructed by the poet and her commissioned identities of brush strokes, plaster pushes and ink licks and, we hope, the public who purchase some of the artistic creations for sale.
Beneath or beside each art work was a typed poem Tamryn had crafted in response to the artists’ work. These poems weave a sensuous and sad story of keeping and farewelling. On Thursday, the spectators were thrilled by the typography and themes of the poems and equally by the pink bubbling wine, unexpected human performance featuring a top hat, suit case, sexy dance and disappearance into the night by someone who may or may not have been Heidiko Jones.
(Readers visit with umbrellas today or sun hats tomorrow).
One particular artist hooked by gaze -they had created leather cowboy portraits, sandy, horse rearing cut outs on dust-felt portrait bases. The artist of this work snipped and painted and patted dry an artwork that combined the miniature with the Western with the Urban.
Now, a journey to the town for the Poets Union festival. I am wary as for all the fabulous energy of last night’s cocktail party, there was on the microphone a series of calls-to-action for a grand Sydney poetry center. I sensed an acronym in the making and a scary excitement for a legacy to be left by someone. I found myself shrinking in the imagining of one place were poets went and came and hung about, as it is my belief creativity should be spread wide, be mobile and constantly chaotic and equally meditative but all around us. In order for ideas to bounce and flip and fall in various shades and shapes we need to escape homogeneous concepts.To rock all poem bodies and brains in the one center would, I feel, lead to unnecessary employment of administrators, consultants and marketers, exaggerated law and order and less funds for the direct creation of poetry projects and payment of poets.
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[...] location for her work, and in supporting the contribution of SCWC member, the poet and artist Tamryn Bennett, who read some of her work to mark the [...]