Never go to Sculpture by the Sea because if you go very early in the morning no-one will have arrived but none of the residents will have left for work. In the evening it's the opposite way round. During the day, the school parties arrive, regardless of the weather. You can tell if it's raining because the teachers are scowling and it's wet underfoot.
But . . .
At 3 pm on the first Tuesday of November, the Melbourne Cup is held, the race which stops Australia, and to our shame it does. So if you are not a fanatic of matters equine or a betting person, get your fresh air on the cliffs above the Tasman Sea between Bondi and Tamarama with just the gulls and whales for company. The photo is a general shot looking towards Tamarama at 3.02 last Tuesday. A perfect time to visit.
But first my perception that our housing officers are not as caring as they might be. As you may know, I took a pair of A4 photos down to Millers Point to where Ben and Bridget had been evicted. The Housing Manager offered to take the photographs into the office. I did not expect to see or hear of those photos again. So I was very pleasantly surprised to find the very next day that Bridget and Ben and another neighbour had been housed adjacently in Newtown (and not way out in the outer Western suburbs) and had received my photos. Thank you very much Sydney Housing for your prompt attention in getting these photos to them. Bridget phoned me up to thank me. She felt that my photo had made her look old (she is over eighty)
And then it was time for Sculpture by the Sea.
I was lucky this year, in the 18th season. I had a long chat with the Founder of SxS, and I had lunch on the same day with the sculptor of the winning humpback whale piece. Which I did. But it's all a matter of perception.
(I went to the information tent to buy a programme, and I was introduced to the Founding Director, who happened to be standing next to me, and we had a five minute chat consisting mainly of pleasantries; next I went to get some lunch, there seemed to be a bit of space at one of the tables, and the guy who moved over just happened to have carved a breaching humpback whale out of a piece of red gum driftwood. Driftwood>Swiss Army Knife; Swiss Army Knife>Driftwood; Driftwood>>Humpback Whale) It's just perception.
You can, of course, get an incorrect perception of a scene like that below, so beloved of Frank Meadow Sutcliffe. It is a photograph of Whitby from St Mary's Churchyard (the Parish Church), high up on the cliff top. The colours are accurate. That mauvey coloured sea fog rolls in on warm days, polluted by the chemical works of Hartlepool, and the temperature drops. The headstones are covered by an earlier pollution - coal black. The grass looks as though it would hurt if it ventured into spring green. It hasn't been spring for grass in Whitby for decades. The best it can manage is not being winter. And yet within the photograph is the great gouge in the cliffs between the camera and the hotels opposite, where Captain Cook and the Endeavour; The Fishburn, the Friendship and the Scarborough and other members of the Australian First Fleet; numerous Polar whaling fleets under the command of Captain Scoresby, all left or arrived at the busy little port of Whitby to and from the whole wide world.
The building on the cliff opposite is where the American novelist Bram Stoker conceived and wrote Dracula, and in the story, it was on the beach on the right where Dracula in the form of a large black dog, escaped onto British soil from the wrecked Russian sailing ship "Demeter" A perception which is strongly held in these parts today.
Which brings us finally to yet another form of perception. There actually is a point to all this.!
Over fifty years ago I had a very good art teacher who one day asked what "St Paul's Cathedral, London", looked like, and proceeded to ask me to draw it on the blackboard. What eventuated was something akin to a domed settlement in a desert oasis. The fact is that our brain takes well known visual cues and tags them in short hand to a "norm". This explains why it was several weeks before the Geography teacher at a school I taught at suddenly said, "You haven't got a beard!". To be precise it had been something like six or seven weeks that I hadn't had one, but his brain knew what I looked like, and was more interested in the messages being sent from my face. A sound survival strategy against year eights!
I was reminded of this in reverse this week, because I have to take consciousness-amending substances, for want of some better words, and the transition to the new drugs has been far from smooth. I was having a cup of tea with an old friend from down the road, when I realised that with the evening light behind her, she looked slightly different. It was Jenny . . . and yet it wasn't quite Jenny. The drug was forcing me to look at the real Jenny at that moment and not just the built up picture over time, the "avatar" if you like that was in my head. I'm afraid I did peer rather a lot, but it was rather fascinating. Shapes were not entirely what they seemed. Her eyes were wider, her brow broader; her hair was reddish. So this was certainly a new perception, but whether the new perception was more or less true was impossible to say.
But first my perception that our housing officers are not as caring as they might be. As you may know, I took a pair of A4 photos down to Millers Point to where Ben and Bridget had been evicted. The Housing Manager offered to take the photographs into the office. I did not expect to see or hear of those photos again. So I was very pleasantly surprised to find the very next day that Bridget and Ben and another neighbour had been housed adjacently in Newtown (and not way out in the outer Western suburbs) and had received my photos. Thank you very much Sydney Housing for your prompt attention in getting these photos to them. Bridget phoned me up to thank me. She felt that my photo had made her look old (she is over eighty)
And then it was time for Sculpture by the Sea.
I was lucky this year, in the 18th season. I had a long chat with the Founder of SxS, and I had lunch on the same day with the sculptor of the winning humpback whale piece. Which I did. But it's all a matter of perception.
(I went to the information tent to buy a programme, and I was introduced to the Founding Director, who happened to be standing next to me, and we had a five minute chat consisting mainly of pleasantries; next I went to get some lunch, there seemed to be a bit of space at one of the tables, and the guy who moved over just happened to have carved a breaching humpback whale out of a piece of red gum driftwood. Driftwood>Swiss Army Knife; Swiss Army Knife>Driftwood; Driftwood>>Humpback Whale) It's just perception.
Tamarama Beach was strewn with objects including a giant frying pan. I thought I'd got the shot end on from the handle, allowing the shadow to delineate the handle, but no, it doesn't quite work. For the image to be successful, a little more handle is needed. I heard one little girl say "Mummy, can I make sandcastles?" "I wish you could make an omelette, darling" was the reply!
One of my friends who loved the peacock, hopefully will like this brace of photos for her new Bondi home
Then my favourite SxS shot taken early in the morning in Marks Park with a wonderful colour palate of blues, purples, greens mauves and pinks. It was a general shot, but it so happens that it has captured everyone when they were looking in the same direction out to sea. This explains the strange walk, the almost zombie-like inexorable move in one direction, and the "Wicker Man" in the centre of the exhibits.
This is probably my favourite "S x S" shot for 2014 Very much what is seen is a false perception of what was in front of the camera that morning!
You can, of course, get an incorrect perception of a scene like that below, so beloved of Frank Meadow Sutcliffe. It is a photograph of Whitby from St Mary's Churchyard (the Parish Church), high up on the cliff top. The colours are accurate. That mauvey coloured sea fog rolls in on warm days, polluted by the chemical works of Hartlepool, and the temperature drops. The headstones are covered by an earlier pollution - coal black. The grass looks as though it would hurt if it ventured into spring green. It hasn't been spring for grass in Whitby for decades. The best it can manage is not being winter. And yet within the photograph is the great gouge in the cliffs between the camera and the hotels opposite, where Captain Cook and the Endeavour; The Fishburn, the Friendship and the Scarborough and other members of the Australian First Fleet; numerous Polar whaling fleets under the command of Captain Scoresby, all left or arrived at the busy little port of Whitby to and from the whole wide world.
The building on the cliff opposite is where the American novelist Bram Stoker conceived and wrote Dracula, and in the story, it was on the beach on the right where Dracula in the form of a large black dog, escaped onto British soil from the wrecked Russian sailing ship "Demeter" A perception which is strongly held in these parts today.
Which brings us finally to yet another form of perception. There actually is a point to all this.!Over fifty years ago I had a very good art teacher who one day asked what "St Paul's Cathedral, London", looked like, and proceeded to ask me to draw it on the blackboard. What eventuated was something akin to a domed settlement in a desert oasis. The fact is that our brain takes well known visual cues and tags them in short hand to a "norm". This explains why it was several weeks before the Geography teacher at a school I taught at suddenly said, "You haven't got a beard!". To be precise it had been something like six or seven weeks that I hadn't had one, but his brain knew what I looked like, and was more interested in the messages being sent from my face. A sound survival strategy against year eights!
I was reminded of this in reverse this week, because I have to take consciousness-amending substances, for want of some better words, and the transition to the new drugs has been far from smooth. I was having a cup of tea with an old friend from down the road, when I realised that with the evening light behind her, she looked slightly different. It was Jenny . . . and yet it wasn't quite Jenny. The drug was forcing me to look at the real Jenny at that moment and not just the built up picture over time, the "avatar" if you like that was in my head. I'm afraid I did peer rather a lot, but it was rather fascinating. Shapes were not entirely what they seemed. Her eyes were wider, her brow broader; her hair was reddish. So this was certainly a new perception, but whether the new perception was more or less true was impossible to say.
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