From the Director's desk...

Christine McMillan

We've all been very quiet at the Archive, apologies to our regular readers...

Several staff have been on leave with health problems (including me), I can't even blame it on the Australian winter because we are scattered worldwide, lol. Let's hope we all get better soon!

In between bouts of sick leave I did at least manage to visit Christine McMillan's exhibition "Gathering" at Bathurst Regional Art Gallery and catch up with Christine, who has been a supporter of the Archive for many years. The exhibition was stunning. As always Chris' choice of media - in this case, everything from echidna spines to gauze bandages to grass seeds (see photo above) - is extraordinary. Here's a small section from the essay written by Amanda Lawson in the exhibition brochure:

"one of the most impressive aspects of Christine's practice is the way she moves seamlessly across media. It seems her pursuit of visual languages to capture concepts or shape a fascination with the physical properties of the material world cannot be fixed or limited by any one medium. Her practice is truly hybrid, resisting neat categorization, and all the more interesting to observe and appreciate because of that fluidity...

"The works are driven by a sense of energy and enquiry as well as an acute attention to detail. Based in, but never limited by, the local and regional environment this intricate body of work resonates at global level"

The Archive is lucky enough to share one of those works as Christine very generously donated an exquisite work on paper, utilizing watercolour and echidna spines. Photos coming soon...

On the last day of the Bathurst exhibition Christine presented a performance with Lisa Roberts and Karen Riley. Chris writes on her blog:

"The movement was connected by white cotton gauze, if one person made a movement the other had to compensate. The ‘as the dry’ projection played over the gauze. Tracy Sorensen, whose background is in journalism, community arts and video script writing, videoed the Gathering performance. Sue Clarke-Lindfield operated the still camera for the animations. It was another gathering"

You can view the You Tube video below.

I'll bring you up to date with other Archive happenings in a later post. For now: a final word to our readers: if you would like us to promote any Palestinian projects or events, please just drop us a line, we'd love to help!

(Photo: from Christine's blog
Video: You Tube)