Dancing Brolgas, Steel Balls, and Beating Hearts of the Universe

Today I spent a lot of time walking around the city, alternating between finding quiet places to write and popping into bookstores and art galleries to check out the notebooks they had on sale. I spent longer than intended in the Brisbane gallery because I had to check my bag before I could go to their bookstore, so I figured I may as well take a look around. I spent some quality time staring at Judy Watson’s Sacred Ground, Beating Heart, which is one of those art-works that’s done a disservice when you look at reproductions because it looses some of the texture and depth that makes it intriguing when seem up-close (stare at it long enough, and it’s almost like staring into the night sky – it’s got the same kind of depths).

Another chunk of time was spent in front of Sydney Long’s Spirit of the Plains, which is basically the illustration for some kind of Australian magic realist story blending together Greek myth and Australian fauna. It’s a graceful, delicate kind of painting, full of motion as the brolgas dance. I half expect someone to point Angela Slatter or Kathleen Jennings at it one day, and get her to write the story the accompanies it.

The gallery had also brought back one of my favourite installations, which first appeared during an Asia-Pacific Triennial back when i first moved to Brisbane fifteen or sixteen years ago.

A post shared by Peter M Ball (@petermball) on Jul 8, 2018 at 8:23pm PDT

To my considerable surprise, I managed to make it through the entire day without buying a new notebook (although I was sorely tempted). I did get a bunch of writing done while fossicking around, largely by finding a quiet nook to put down a page before wandering off and thinking through the next part of the scene before finding another quiet nook.

You can clock up ten pages of writing this way, but it involves doing a lot of walking between pages. I really should finish this up and go sleep.