The only realism in art is of the imagination.
It is only thus that the work escapes
plagiarism after nature and becomes a creation.
(William Carlos Williams)
I. Every convention is also a technique
1. sleepless thirty days:
place names loom upand disappear. Apparitions
of grain bins eruptingin dull conflagration–
slaughter yards–the urine-coloured eyes of dead
sheep leering fromirrigation ditches. We
slug it out on the roadsidefor hours just to keep
the disagreement alive.Each blow describes
the beginning of a storytold from its end: weighted
with its own nihilistic poetry.
2. sometimes drank until you were numb.
or sat there among sleeplessdust motes like a phoney buddha
high on ephedrine and mantra.seeking direction from
x to y in the absence of anyrecognisable landmark,
varying the dosage (degrees of relationbetween what is and is not prescribed
according to the logic of adversity).then turning north into sunsets
redolent with odalisque figures–naked silos posed against fields
of yellow-flowered rape …we are back were we began:
the flatness of a perspective scenewhich recedes against
a merely conventional horizon,Blaxland and Lawson-esque,
appearing inverted on the other side–as if to rectify
a wrong way of seeing.
3. where to now? riding in
on the last breeze and hard up.a hundred pages on
through plotless outcountrywe arrive again at the
flat edge of pacific breakersin slow dissolve to urban
nostalgia, moral undertowand nameless affect …
or backwashed in reverse cycleas prodigal sons gone south
and no forwarding address.We could've been the children
of Whitlam and Coca Cola,jetlagged, having lost track of
history or currency denominations.
4. nothing to be gained here.
before, after. cash for scrap.another 4:00 a.m. stupor
vomiting the dregs of last night'smental arithmetic. dreams of a
recurring decimalthat stretches out cross-continent
without ever giving you a clueto its reason for being there.
A punchline without a joke.Dead-of-night towns on the
overland route. Miles gape,evoke silent interlocutors
on the nod towards unfoldingcatastrophe. A deus ex machina
lurches carbon-arcedout of bearing cases ground down
on the long haul from mount isato broken hill, dry-retched into
cataracts of bulldust. Spent fuellingering like cheap cloying perfume.
Cutting the black interstate lineto haul eastwards across
salt flats ridged by narrowhorizontal bands: on one side high
dunes littered with coarse vegetationwhich when slightly decomposed
has a brown earthy appearance.
5. Daybreak under barbiturate cloud-
patterns. Ahead, the sky sends downa dragline, describing a vertical front
ranged from on-high to the greyvolume of easterly pressure systems.
a mirror, held up to art: to reflect,is not to change. traversing unfamiliar
regions of cross-sectional debrisour projections fly straight back at us–
bypassed on the long straight road,thinking the scene ironic or insincere?
A procedure, to establishfirst principles. Landscape with face
and hands turning on a dial.an ambiguous terrain, its objectivity
is a thing of the mind, una cosa mentale.
II. A monument to something history plagiarised
‘dark revolving in silent activity.' Proximity
edges forward, an isolated and discarded
thing. strange shapes bred from this
forsaken wilderness–wheels of coal trains,
shunting of freight cars, loading the giantconveyor belts. Long peninsulas jut against
sky blacked-out of nocturnal cartography,
awaiting castration. Rockdrill totems,
paleoflora. each stroke of the brush
of the hammer of the pen, to force the handagainst petrified inner space. Drastic
as the maternal body's death cycles and
purification. Hate becomes an efficient engine
scraping away at the coruscated vision,
made edgeless and in time the reasonableordination of events. Not to balk
from consigning what needs to scrap (‘ends
accomplished turn to means'). And with these
precautions, set out again westwards to
clear a path through the broken-headed tracts.
this obelisque erected in / macquarie
place / a.d. 1818 / to record that
all / public roads / leading
to the interior / of the colony / are
measured from it
III. The effect of travelling in distant places
1. Attention cones, outward from
light source and seasonal photographstake motion in their grasp.
The prodigal's irrational returnthrough disorderly striations and
eerily neutral background noise:the sound of an airport, of a
house collapsing, of a bridgein rain. Perhaps some alien
brain there waiting to smother us.Sunsets wrecking the blanked-
out cellophane happiness.After the nightsea crossing–
retracing, step by un-countable step, the sinewed track
(‘irruminated meat').Autumn leaves and excrement,
like haunting reciprocations.the sick man groans,
dragging his sack of instrumentson into the immeasurable–
beckoned by its fool's glimmer …
2. balshazzar's ghost, draining
into grey, too slow and too final,and what's written there–
some strange irregularity of manblazoned in the sky's zero.
the dance around the golden calf–a common instinct towards religion
in monetaried vehemence.in each outcrop, a hieroglyph
of dionysian ecstasy, sloughed offfrom the eye that beholds it.
It's morbid death-watch begins.perhaps we are waiting
to be told that man is not born freeor good, but is only the backwards
description of what he underestimates.
3. the eye, too, is a product
of history. Contemplatingdesiccation and evitable
lines of regress, water to salt.Clumps of skeleton weed
standing alone in the midstof alchemical counter-proofs
miming ecology. The vastsignatura rerum crossed-out
by seams of alkaline.A noise like machined-
grist hammering a boreholeand brackish effluent spat out.
What it feeds does not equalthat tract of uncultivated land,
sketched into the backgroundpiero della francesca-like
as a scaffold on whicha foreground hangs. Being
so much dreck and signage.
4. dry wind undresses ground
naked under heat-tremor.Buckled sheets of plate glass.
Irregular emissions fill the air,mimeographed in reflex cutaneously
programmed. A very presentphysics of the senses stripped-out
of genital wilderness, lymphaticsand distort-teratology. The end-stop
lying there and coming apartinto a gap that knowingly desires us.
As red ground, cut across with bluein post-ketamine let-down, emanates
from cracks in the opaque residue.
IV. reprise
not at all as you had pictured it–
out on the broken edge‘liquid mountains float in the air' …
outcropping from thorn bush,slates of bloodstone placed there
according to the laws of chance–the idea, the motive, immured in its
vault like a fossil awaiting excavation.We reached the next turning point
and came to a standstill:from centre dead up against periphery
(no things but in relations). The oldillusion of inward left bare
in the first false dawn. A bridge to thepromised land in perpetual
strip-tease slung above the 100,000expiring light bulbs of luna p rk.
Undressing the blacked-out scar ofdecommissioned navy yards, dry
docks … Our hungers for elsewherewere free to enlarge, conscripted
to the Big Idea–not by ballot but bylottery–free too from the necessity
to prove anything. In the shadowof America everything was neon,
sex and no come-down.A plush hollywood blonde
all glass and electric switchesradiating from a single point
like a finial on a skyscraper.It rises up from the compendium
that constitutes its centre:an ever-exploding movement
watched over again on replayand then reversed, jump-cutting
at zero altitude from interchange tonightroads across flat out-country …
Difficul to remember thepurpose and reason for continuing.
Already, apparitions of distancereveal the end of the line–
vertical and pin-point luminousas conducting rods and storm fronts
ranging west to east.the rainslashed glare of
articulated lorries as unrealas visitants from outer worlds.
Earth tremor and juggernautcut sideways in the wake and counting
back to the moment the halo formedaround the analogue dial,
wandjina-like, and electric asspirit medium shot at high speed.
Thinking to out-run the dryresounding emptiness head-on.
Escape was a sad parody of a filmthat's been running for a century.
blue shadows flicker acrossdefaced warning signs–a surface
of night stretched thin acrossunbidden secrets of dead lake beds,
diesel and methedrine. Or twoexxed-out roadmaps overlapping
in the rearview, testing the stringencyof what it means to be invisible–
though drawing no conclusion from it.
- 115: SPACE
with A Sometimes
114: NO THEME 13
with J Toledo & C Tse
113: INVISIBLE WALLS
with A Walker & D Disney
112: TREAT
with T Dearborn
111: BABY
with S Deo & L Ferney
110: POP!
with Z Frost & B Jessen
109: NO THEME 12
with C Maling & N Rhook
108: DEDICATION
with L Patterson & L Garcia-Dolnik
107: LIMINAL
with B Li
106: OPEN
with C Lowe & J Langdon
105: NO THEME 11
with E Grills & E Stewart
104: KIN
with E Shiosaki
103: AMBLE
with E Gomez and S Gory
102: GAME
with R Green and J Maxwell
101: NO THEME 10
with J Kinsella and J Leanne
100: BROWNFACE
with W S Dunn
99: SINGAPORE
with J Ip and A Pang
97 & 98: PROPAGANDA
with M Breeze and S Groth
96: NO THEME IX
with M Gill and J Thayil
95: EARTH
with M Takolander
94: BAYT
with Z Hashem Beck
93: PEACH
with L Van, G Mouratidis, L Toong
92: NO THEME VIII
with C Gaskin
91: MONSTER
with N Curnow
90: AFRICAN DIASPORA
with S Umar
89: DOMESTIC
with N Harkin
88: TRANSQUEER
with S Barnes and Q Eades
87: DIFFICULT
with O Schwartz & H Isemonger
86: NO THEME VII
with L Gorton
85: PHILIPPINES
with Mookie L and S Lua
84: SUBURBIA
with L Brown and N O'Reilly
83: MATHEMATICS
with F Hile
82: LAND
with J Stuart and J Gibian
81: NEW CARIBBEAN
with V Lucien
80: NO THEME VI
with J Beveridge
57.1: EKPHRASTIC
with C Atherton and P Hetherington
57: CONFESSION
with K Glastonbury
56: EXPLODE
with D Disney
55.1: DALIT / INDIGENOUS
with M Chakraborty and K MacCarter
55: FUTURE MACHINES
with Bella Li
54: NO THEME V
with F Wright and O Sakr
53.0: THE END
with P Brown
52.0: TOIL
with C Jenkins
51.1: UMAMI
with L Davies and Lifted Brow
51.0: TRANSTASMAN
with B Cassidy
50.0: NO THEME IV
with J Tranter
49.1: A BRITISH / IRISH
with M Hall and S Seita
49.0: OBSOLETE
with T Ryan
48.1: CANADA
with K MacCarter and S Rhodes
48.0: CONSTRAINT
with C Wakeling
47.0: COLLABORATION
with L Armand and H Lambert
46.1: MELBOURNE
with M Farrell
46.0: NO THEME III
with F Plunkett
45.0: SILENCE
with J Owen
44.0: GONDWANALAND
with D Motion
43.1: PUMPKIN
with K MacCarter
43.0: MASQUE
with A Vickery
42.0: NO THEME II
with G Ryan
41.1: RATBAGGERY
with D Hose
41.0: TRANSPACIFIC
with J Rowe and M Nardone
40.1: INDONESIA
with K MacCarter
40.0: INTERLOCUTOR
with L Hart
39.1: GIBBERBIRD
with S Gory
39.0: JACKPOT!
with S Wagan Watson
38.0: SYDNEY
with A Lorange
37.1: NEBRASKA
with S Whalen
37.0: NO THEME!
with A Wearne
36.0: ELECTRONICA
with J Jones