Awaken

Awaken

12 September to 25 October 2014

Anita McIntyre, Bev Hogg, Barbara Rogers, Dianne Firth, Judi Elliott, Kaye Pemberton, Linda Davey, Morgan James Monique van Nieuwland, Nancy Tingey, Ruth Hingston, Sally Blake, Sarit Cohen, Alison Jackson, Margaret Brown, John Heaney, Luna Ryan, Nikki Main, Avi Amesbury, Elizabeth Paterson, Valerie Kirk and Ximena Briceno.

Nancy TingeyTen(nis) Net Ball, 2014, Recycled fruit net bags. Photo: Geoff Woolfenden

Something is needed to wake us by Nigel Featherstone

  1. I want to be there when it comes.
  2. To be precise, I want to be there in the moments before it comes. I want to be a witness, but also a willing participant, engaged and alive. Breathless.
  3. It's about darkness, the house a subterranean cave. My eyes are open, but there's very little to see. It's about the near-perfect quiet. It's no good when, for whatever reason (an exhausting social event, a rough night's sleep), I wake too late and the house is already filled with light and noise. No, that's not right. I want to be walking around my home, going from room to room, opening curtains and blinds to the black and the stillness and the quiet.
  4. Toni Morrison knows about this. In herParis Review interview, the novelist recounts how a colleague told her about her writing routine. 'Recently I was talking to a writer who described something she did whenever she moved to her writing table. I don't remember exactly what the gesture was – there is something on her desk that she touches before she hits the computer keyboard – but we began to talk about little rituals that one goes through before beginning to write. I, at first, thought I didn't have a ritual, but then I remembered that I always get up and make a cup of coffee while it is still dark – it must be dark – and then I drink the coffee and watch the light come. And she said, Well, that's a ritual.'
  5. How morning – the break of dawn – does that: it enables us. Allows, facilitates, permits, makes possible. We enter the day, and the day enters us. We don't know how the day will unravel, not really. We can hope, we can have expectations; there will be things we want and need – food, companionship, success, acknowledgment, reward. Or we might let the day simply (or not so simply at all) unravel. We'll see what happens.
  6. Artists – all kinds of artists – are good at seeing what happens. In fact, they are the best at it. They see what happens, understand what happens; more importantly, they know what happens. And what happened – past tense. And what might happen – the vital future. What might happen to our lives? What might happen to our relationships? What might happen to our places, to our environment? Our environment: the natural and the 'man' made: are we screwing it over, are we losing our way, are we not listening, are we not seeing the signs? These are good questions. These are the questions good artists ask.
  7. Ben Okri writes, 'The artist should never lose the spirit of play. It is curious how sometimes the biggest tasks are best approached tangentially, with a smile in the soul. Much has been written about the seriousness with which important work has to be undertaken. I believe that seriousness and rigour are invaluable, and hard work indispensable – but I want to speak a little for the mysterious and humble might of a playful creative spirit. Playfulness lightens all terrifying endeavours. It humanises them, and brings them within the realm of childhood. The playfulness becomes absorbing, engrossing, all-consuming, serious even. The spirit warms. Memory burns brightly. The fires of intelligence blaze away, and self-consciousness evaporates. Then – wonderfully – the soul finds the sea; and the usually divided selves function, luminously, as one.'
  8. Oh isn't that astonishing: 'the mysterious and humble might of a playful creative spirit'. I can see that here, I can feel it, I can hear it. Laughing, warbling magpies, singing for the morning, or for each other, or just because they can. Ripe soft fruit in the grass: red and green and orange and yellow. Fresh lawn like blades or spikes. 'The importance of precious ground.' A fat black chook, comb upright and ready – very generously, she's keeping our tea warm. 'Wake up! Who's for tennis?' Seashells like spoons – cutlery for a picnic? Begging bowls for everyone, or they could be new ways to hold better ideas. Broken maps for buried treasure, except the map might be the treasure itself. Shadows casting both inwards and outwards – the miracle of this and that and more. A confluence of roadways: 'Mirrors and memories, all tied together.' A dead parrot; or it's sheltering from the storm. 'Barking up the wrong tree: LOVE AND PEACE, NO WAR.' A rolling, patterned meadow; microscopic skin. Eggs like eyes; eyes like eggs ('a world within'). A dark gift. Rejuvenation. 'These plates have no instructions.'
  9. Toni Morrison has more to say. 'I realised that for me this ritual comprises my preparation to enter a space that I can only call nonsecular … Writers all devise ways to approach that place where they expect to make contact, where they become the conduit, or where they engage with this mysterious process. For me, light is the signal in the transition. It's not being in the light, it's being therebefore it arrives. It enables me.'

I suspect you know what Morrison means.

  1. Ben Okri has more to say about this as well. 'The reality of what we are doing to one another is explosive. The secret content of our lives is terrifying. There is so much to scream about. There are great polluting lies and monsters running around in the seabed of our century. The river within us has become more frozen than ever before. We need much more than Kafka's proverbial axe to crack the ice and make the frozen blood of humanity flow again. Something is needed to wake us from the frightening depths of our moral sleep.'

I suspect you know what Okri means too.

  1. My eyes are now open; they have been opened for me. I can see differently. I feel new, renewed. I feel deeper, bigger, better, brighter. My breathing is strong, powerful, potent. There are images – ideals, realities, opportunities – that I will carry with me for days, years, decades, until the end. The light is magnificent. It's almost blinding.
  2. I want to take this art work with both hands. I want to hold it, embrace it, kiss it. I want it like I've never known before.
  3. I am awake.

Nigel Featherstone is an Australian writer of fiction and creative non-fiction. His most recent work is The Beach Volcano, a novella published by Blemish Books (2014). For more information, please visit www.opentopublic.com.au