HELLO TO WILLIAM & KATE

Source: Duchess Kate blog

The Jubilee royal tour of South-East Asia by Prince William and Kate begins in a few days.  They will visit Singapore, Malaysia and the Solomon Islands.

And in an exciting news flash, on 19th September they will return home after a Change of Planes in Brisbane!!

Will we see them?

Will it be in the middle of the night?

Officialdom is tight-lipped right now ...

Perhaps they'll have time to pop into our local Gallery of Modern Art -

Currently showing: Sculpture is Everything: Contemporary Works from the Collection.

Photo by Red Cardinal

This is fun.  By New Zealand artist Michael Parekowhai, and entitled The Horn of Africa [2006]

Here a New Zealand fur seal balances a grand piano on its nose.

With a bit of imagination, we can see the shapes represent the North and South Islands of New Zealand.

The more densely populated north, cultural and political centre, top heavy, represents civilisation.

The rugged sparsely populated south, with its fabulous wild lakes, mountains, fiords, is evoked by a fur seal, native to the area.

The piano stands for European colonials as the purveyors of high culture and moral standards.  The title comes from a NZ novel in the 1920s by J Marden about a lonely, educated English woman in a tiny settlement by the Onanatea River, NZ, and refers to the original prehistoric humanity coming out of East Africa and spreading throughout the world.

Remember the Jane Campion film The Piano?

It references some of these ideas, although it has not been acknowedged as inspired by the novel.

Photo: Red Cardinal

I first discovered the Indian artist Sonabai about ten years ago, and was immediately charmed by her folkloric, tribal art form, entirely her own.

Born around 1930 in a Central Indian village, she grew up in a large happy family, but had no artistic training.

In 1953, shortly after giving birth to a son, she was locked away by her jealous husband for the next fifteen years!

She cooked and cleaned for them, but could not leave her home.

She had no toys for her boy, so she dug clay from her well and made little clay figures for him - horses, birds, monkeys, and so on. 

It was unbearably hot in the house, and she found a way to cool it down.

She shaved strips from leftover bamboo poles, curled them into circles, tied them together into a form of lattice, hung them between columns of her internal courtyard, then covered it with a layer of clay.  This cast shadows and caught the wind.  Next she added clay figures to the lattice - birds, snakes, little human figures.  With no option to buy colours, she experimented in her kitchen with spices and herbs, making her own pigments.  Eventually she transformed her entire house with her own unique art form.

In 1968 for reasons unexplained, she was freed from her isolation, and rejoined village life.  She continued with her joyous art practice, and others came to learn.  In the 1980s Sonabai was discovered by the outside world, art curators, and the Indian Government.  She received Government grants to teach, her art was collected by various Art Museums, and she and her son even travelled to the USA to demonstrate her art. 

Sonabai died in 2007, and we are lucky our gallery owns this whimsical and happy piece in our collection.

The only domestic artistic production in the Cardinal nest

has been my floral pants - just in time for Spring!

Hope your week is going Springingly!

xxx