MANY EVENTS

November 15.

Since I got back from the northwest I’ve taken in a rich mix of cultural activities here in Hobart. This may be a small city, but it’s culturally thriving and active. Beginning last Thursday I’ve been to a book launch, an art exhibition, and a talk by an artist.

Late Thursday afternoon I went to the launch of Senator Bob Brown’s Earth. Self-published after being shopped around to various publishers, the book was eloquently and elegantly launched by Pete Hay (poet and author of Van Diemonian Essays). Cassie O’Connor, recently elected as a Green to the State government, orchestrated the event Greens with affection and eloquence. The book’s text is a meditation, in brief but moving statements, about how we’re called to live in relationship with the rest of the planet, while attempting to heal the damage we’ve done to it. Brown’s fine photographs are a fine accompaniment to it, underscoring what’s at stake. It’s a handsomely produced book using an attractive recycled paper.

Senator Bob Brown is the current Parliamentary leader of the Australian Green Party. In 1978 he was made director of the Tasmania Wilderness Society. Trained as a doctor, he became an activist during the campaign against the damming of the Franklin River. He served as an Member of the House of Assembly in Tasmania for 10 years before becoming the first Green Senator in the Federal Government in 1996. He was also the first openly gay member of the Australian Parliament. For more about him see http://bobbrown.greensmps.org.au/about-bob-brown

On Friday afternoon I stopped in at the Carnegie Gallery to see Irene Briant’s Lost, work based on a true story of a woman who was lost in the bush for 9 days in 1908. Briant has covered tea trays with fabric and placed on them, also covered in fabric, both expected and unexpected objects—a tea set and a currawong, for instance. A large handmirror suspended from the ceiling and covered with fabric patterned with leaves and branches on one side, reflected me back to myself lost among those branches and leaves. Many lovely small pieces constructed from combinations of manmade and natural objects made up an assemblage called “Here and There.” I liked the work very much, have not been able to find out much about Briant herself. But the catalogue essay (by Sean Kelly, though not the one in NYC) is available online at http://www.bettgallery.com.au/artists/briant/lost/essay.htm

At 6:00 that evening at Fullers, we went to an XYZ event, featuring American artist Chris Jordan who spoke about his work, Running the Numbers, and also his most recent project Midway. The Gyre. This last work is very powerful—a series of photographs of albatross carcasses from Midway Island in the Pacific, birds killed by their diet of plastic scooped up from the Ocean. The work is hard to watch, its stunning beauty making it impossible to feel unmoved by the images. You can see for yourself at: http://blogs.nybooks.com/post/240609421/chris-jordan Jordan has made the sequence available for anyone who wants to us it.