In 1981 I performed in a Las Vegas/cabaret style show in a remote city in Japan—dancing a copy of a copy of a copy of a style with origins from a vaudevillian history that evolved way before I took my first ballet lesson.
What has this got to do with Fly Rhythm?
A lot... the experience of movement is a blank canvas upon which all life takes part. The idea of performance through dance as a way to communicate is not unlike the processes of making the images and video in this exhibition. This project coalesces seemingly disparate ideas through the language of movement mediated through the body.
Lensless photography mimics the iris of the eye—the hole through which light focuses the outside into an image. Light passes through the iris into an otherwise light safe container. Images in movement or stillness are perceived through the eye physically yet are understood, interpreted through a history of remembrance that is embedded within the physical body. Movement particularly resonates through muscle and perceptual memories and this language informed the process of recording the images in Fly Rhythm.
I felt like I was choreographing a dance—the time of day decided by my physical experience of light—a knowledge built up over my 59 years. The sun sinking at sunset is my chosen time to shoot—the magic hour. My body contains memories of light and motion through inhabiting the flesh; a sensuousness unique to the north of Australia and Asia.
The 13 images in Fly Rhythm were shot in the Dandenongs, Altona, Victoria and Bruny Island, Tasmania created through exercising procedural memory of light, air and motion. With camera in hand away from my eyes I travel through a landscape as light fluctuates—the air and geography trigger a kind of fluid performance—a still image of motion remembered—a satisfying past time.
