The Diary Of Saga Moor
Master of Fine Arts by Research
College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales
Painting Department
2009
Soma Garner
1 Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge my parents Mary Teresa and Cactus Garner for all of their love and support.
I would like to dedicate the completion of my Masters of Fine Arts to the memory of my Babushka Tossia Obrimiva, who gave me my passion of all things Russian.
I want to thank my partner Matthew Tumbers for all of his encouragement and support.
I would like to acknowledge my initial Masters Supervisor Peter Pinson and in particular my long term supervisor Gary Carsley for all of his dedication and also Jason Martin at Flinders Street Gallery, Sydney.
2 INTRODUCTION By Soma Garner
This is the Diary of Saga Moor. It was entrusted to me as her best friend when her young life was tragically cut short by an unidentified flying object. During a painting expedition in a deserted Australian outback town, she was transformed into a raging 50-Metre Woman. Saga’s original diary was over 33,000 words. Choosing the entries was always going to be difficult. Nevertheless I have tried to ensure that only the relevant parts of Saga’s life have been included in this publication.
A Scorpio, Saga Moor was born on the 1st of November 1979 on the island of Crete, living in Greece and Paris before arriving in Australia in 1981. She was 29 years of age when the tragedy of the gigantism struck and was subsequently gunned down by military tanks.
I would like to describe some of Saga Moor’s unique characteristics such as her laughter when nervous. She frequently dressed in cardigans, brightly coloured stockings and a modest selection of hats, her favourite being one in black felt. She never wore a watch, making her regularly late.
Saga’s tone of voice was for the most part mild, heartfelt and sincere. Her hair was red/brown/black/purple according to an almost weekly whim, shoulder length with a fringe occasionally in the shape of a widow’s peak above hazel green and brown eyes.
Saga enjoyed a cherished relationship with both of her parents. Her mother Mashinka Obramiya originated from Russian parents who had met in university in St Petersburg. Both were unable to complete their degrees as World War II engulfed the Eastern Front forcing them to immigrate to Australia.
Moor’s father Garner was born in Los Angeles, California. Mashinka and Garner had met in Paris. Both are Cancers – astrological crabs. The Moor household brims with plants, giant metal abstract sculptures wrought by Garner and many classic works of Australiana and Russian fiction.
Before Saga’s attainment of her 50-Metre status she attended Strathfield Girls from years 7 to 9, the majority of her time being bunkered-down in the art classroom. A scholarship opportunity presented itself at a Seventh Day Adventist School for Year 10 despite the absence of such faith in the Moor household. After a somewhat “disturbing” year, she moved once again, graduating from Burwood Girls High School in 1997 with commendable academic results.
Out of the gates of the schoolyard Saga had a world of learning ahead of her. By the first year she attended Julian Ashton Art School whilst completing an Advanced Diploma of
3 Fine Arts, Meadow Bank TAFE. The following year 1999 began the Bachelor journey of Fine Arts at the National Art School (1999-2001) where she majored in painting.
In the tradition of ‘the atelier’ as bequeathed by N.A.S in 2002 she rented her first studio. Unfortunately the warehouse space was decrepit, dank, poorly lit and an occupational health and safety hazard with frequent winds of industrial fumes and pigeons proliferating in the rafters above. These appalling conditions saw Saga enrol at the College of Fine Arts in order to complete a Master of Art by Coursework in 2003. This prompted her to upgrade so to speak and in March 2004 she began her Master of Fine Arts by Research at CoFA where I first met her.
However, Saga Moor was already on her way out. Alone in the desert wilderness, solar winds radiating through her inner core and newly morphed into a 50-Metre Woman she was hell bent on mass destruction.
It is through the resilience of her character, evident in this diary entry and her resulting body of paintings that recounts a journey of a young artist in the 21st century; a life that so closely mirrored my own.
4 CONTENTS
The Diary of Saga Moor Exegesis 1
Acknowledgements 2
INTRODUCTION by Soma Garner 3-4
Contents 5-6
Title Page 7
SELF-PORTRAITURE, PERFORMANCE AND PAINTING March 25 2004 – October 26 2006
Commencement of Masters of Fine Arts in Painting 8-9 Ode to Charlotte Salomon 9-10 Broken Hill 11 Student Life and Central Station 12-14 Reading Peggy Pheelan 14 Glenn Brown and Digital Images 15-16 The Brett Whitely, Finalist 16 Cindy Sherman 17
SUPERFICTIONS, MASKS AND EXHIBITION January 13 2007 – May 20 2008 The Premise of a Superfiction 17-18 Allegory of Self Deception 18-20 Visiting Soma at Artspace 20-22 Tracey Emin 22-23 Horror at Swan Bay 23-24 Review of Soma Garner’s show at Flinders Street Gallery 24-26
TRAVELS TO THE USA DREAM FACTORY June 1 – August 3 2008 Itinerary for USA Field Trip 27 Times Square, New York 27 Whitney Museum Biennial 2008 28 Karen Kilimnik at the Whitney Museum 28-29 Alice Neel at The Philadelphia Museum Of Modern Art 29-31 Museum of Jurassic Technologies and The Mutter Museum 31-32 Ultimate Illusions of Fantasy 32-33 Hollywood Walk of Fame 33-34
5 BACK IN SYDNEY STUDIO August 2008 - September 2009 Lacan 34-35 Self Portrait as Medusa the Projected Myth 35-36 Frida Kahlo and Isolation 36 Saga Moor ‘s Artist Talk 36-39 Artemisia Gentileschi 39 Frida Kahlo and pain 39-40 Scandalised Masks 41 Seagull 41-42 Monet at AGNSW 42 Visiting Soma Garner’s Studio in St Peters 43 Saga’s Studio Thoughts 44 Art Dispensable 44 Plan for Trip to desert 45
ATTACK OF THE 50 METRE WOMAN 45-48 September 15 – September 23 2009
EPILOGUE - Soma Garner 49
SAGA MOORS RETROSPECTVE EXHIBITION 50-56 APRIL 20 2009, FLINDERS STREET GALLERY, SYDNEY
READING REFERENCES 57
6 The Diary Of Saga Moor
7 March 25 2004 I have commenced my Masters of Fine Arts by Research; I really hope that I will make a solid body of work for final exhibition. I have already met some lovely people in the MFA Programme – particularly a woman named Soma. We are located in the same painting bay. Soma seems friendly but there seems to be a lot of layers to her personality. I hope that I will get to know her better as time goes by.
My initial proposal to Peter Pinson (my MFA supervisor) was to investigate the ‘Self-Portrait within the Traditions of Painting’. I have just been to the library and borrowed some books - 1001 Self-Portraits, Rembrandt, Expressionists and Women Self-Portraits. I particularly enjoyed discovering a female painter named Paula Modershern Becket (German 1876-1907) who created unique ‘native’ inspired paintings.
On the left is Becket’s self-portrait Half Figure with Amber Necklace, 1906 On the right is Vincent Van Gogh’s Portrait of the Postman Joseph Roulin, 1888
I loaned a book on Vincent Van Gogh. I thought that it was interesting Vincent painted so many self-portraits. I wondered whether it was from not having access to many models. Though his postman Joseph Roulin did sit for him when they were living in the Yellow House in Arles. Soma who is also a fan of Van Gogh mentioned today that the Yellow House also existed in Sydney’s Kings Cross founded by Martin Sharp in the 1970s The great thing about a self-portrait is that you are always available as a subject to sit for at any time, all you have to do is pick up a mirror.
8 Some of my most favourite paintings of Van Gogh are his self-portraits, in particular his bandaged ear after a fight with Gaugain. I have always loved Van Gogh’s paint application; he manages to somehow capture his feelings of pain, anguish and passion through his magnificent brush strokes.
Vincent Van Gogh, Self-Portrait with a Bandaged Ear, 1889
May 13 2004 There is an artist whose paintings of her life story I find incredibly inspiring - Charlotte Salomon (1917-1943), a German born Jewish artist.
A Charlotte Salomon self-portrait in gouache.
I was thinking about her in relation to my very own diary entries, namely the title of her autobiographical work is ‘Charlotte Salomon: Life? Or Theatre?’
Consisting of 769 individual works (all gouaches) painted between 1941 and 1943 in the south of France, while Salomon was in hiding from the Nazi’s. When she questioned amongst all the maddness “whether to take her own life or undertake something wildly unusual” she thankfully created the
9 slightly fantastical Superfictional autobiography, preserving the main events of her life such as her mother’s suicide (when she was a young girl) and her grandmother’s suicide after the outbreak of war in 1939. The autobiography also portrays Salamon’s studying art in the shadow of the Third Reich in Berlin and her relationship with her grandparents which was not always pleasant.
In her ‘Life? Or Theatre?’ she altered the names of her family, giving her characters pseudonyms. One of the narratives explores her relationship with ‘Amadeus Dahberlohn’ a humorous pseudonym for her voice teacher.
Some of the gouaches from Life? Or Theatre?
The gouaches are painted in an expressionistic manner, almost Munch-like and toward the end of her diary the entries become more gestural and desperate. It is as though she knew that her life was soon to come to an end. I happened to be reading this book in the studio when Soma noticed that I was reading Charlotte Salomon. She lit up immedietly as she loved her series of work also. We agreed how captivating it was from the moment you begin reading, with its spontaneously rendered gouaches of resilient optimism to inclusions of suicide, depression and absolute desperation. Soma said that it seemed Salamon knew she would be exterminated however she was not going to let her existence be erased as though she had never existed at all.
On the 7th of October 1943 at the age of 26 she was transported to Auschwitz, 5 months pregnant where she died in the Gas Chambers.
10 June 12 2004 I have just returned from a field trip to Broken Hill. It is a magnificent landscape of vast wilderness, filled with Aboriginal mysticism and tales of the Dreamtime. I went with a group of UNSW research students in winter from June to July for 17 days - a long time to be immersed in a foreign landscape. What I recall about the field trip the most is that as time went by all the people involved began to share a sense of community within the remote desert context. One of the other really positive outcomes of this trip was that I really got to know Soma. We hit it off immediately out there. We seem to have so many uncanny similarities! We would often separate from the rest of the group, going for long walks and setting up en plein air painting under the giant gum trees.
Saga Moor, Kangaroo Skeleton, Broken Hill 2004. In this painting I was trying to show the harshness of the land such as this kangaroo that had rested under the shade of a tree and then dehydrated.
A snapshot of Soma painting beneath one of those magnificent gum trees in Broken Hill in 2004
11 October 21 2005 I have been energetically involved in student life here at the College of Fine Arts. It’s almost all too good to be true - such a sheltered environment! In the last 3 weeks I have been included in three different exhibitions at the student Kudos Gallery - Dissonance, Portals and Dislocation. I have been busy most of the year painting a series of small-scale oil paintings of Central Station in Sydney. I had initially been interested in the surface qualities of the subject, similar to Monet’s paintings of the Saint Remy Cathedrals at different times of the day. Subsequently, the Central Station Series began to represent more to me.
This painting is from the Central Station Series, 2005
It became metaphorical much like poetry and gradually began to symbolise good and evil, rebirth and death.
Soma made the final selection of the Soda Small Painting Prize at Avalon Beach. I will be picking her up from her parents’ house.
12
Further images from my Central Station Series.
This is a section of a salon style installation of my paintings from Central Station at Kudos Gallery. Note the painted-on bookend!
October 22 2005 I have just come back from the Soda Small Painting Prize. Soma was awarded Highly Commended. When I went to collect her I could not help but observe the similarities to my own parents house! Soma’s parents live in a wonderful house filled with countless books about Australian and Russian
13 History. Her father is also an accomplished abstract sculptor. What an uncanny scenario of life being stranger than fact or fiction.
August 25 2006 Today I read Unmasked, by Peggy Pheelan. “All portraiture is performative, you can only get beyond the surface by working with the surface. All you can do is to manipulate that surface through gesture, costume, expression, radically and correctly…” (Pheelan, page 67). Having begun work on a series of self-portraits, I was interested in this contemporary view on the representation of the self. I found a book in my collection of Rembrandt’s self-portraits. I noticed that in his paintings he had depicted himself in all sorts of different expressions.
These images are by Rembrandt van Rjin. The one on the left is Self- Portrait at the age of 34, 1640 and the one on the right is an etching. Both are contrasting performative self-representations.
Reading Pheelan’s essay I gleaned how portraiture is performative and when one adopts different clothes or an expression, the manner in which one is viewed can be changed. I realised how this could even be applied to the idea of masks, facades and personas, as these are the psychological ways that people may disguise themselves. I mentioned these ideas to Soma and she joked that my concepts reminded her of the fable about wolves dressed in sheep’s ‘clothing’. It is these types of ideas that I am really interested in at the moment - what one perceives as real may in fact not be and how it can be applied to people ‘performing’ representations of themselves.
14 September 12 2006 I am currently applying these theories of performance to making digitally manipulated self-portraits. I had been struggling between the concept of the original and the simulacrum and how a digital reproduction can never replace an original painting ‘in the flesh’ so to speak.
Spot the difference! The one on the left is an original portrait of Soma and the image on the right is a digitally manipulated portrait.
In an ironically titled painting by Glenn Brown, ‘Night of The Living Dead’ his Auerbach head is like a zombie who has become a shell of an image; through the process of painstakingly replicating the paint with realistic brushstrokes it has lost its soul.
The blue one is by Glenn Brown, Night of the Living Dead Series, 2000. The yellow ochre one (on the right!) is the original painted by one of my favourite painters Auerbach, Head of J.M, II, 1981
15 In a sense Glenn Brown was hollowing out the original subject and replicating the facade of the original. Soma, whilst looking at the portrait that I had done of her, said that although it was an interesting concept, and that if it was mainly the theory that I was exploring then the idea of the surface could be applied with paint itself. I agreed with what she had said. I could still play with the surfaces and explore the performative by getting people to wear costumes and masks... Look out, I am about to pick up my brush again and dip it into some real, not pixilated paint!
October 1 2006 Having just delivered my self-portraits to the Brett Whitely Studio for the 2006 Scholarship I am excited that my paintings are to be hung in this exhibition. I am 26, and this is my third time I have been short-listed. The work ranged from 2004 to 2006 so I am very excited to have them all accepted! My research into the self-portrait is going well also. I have been sitting-in on life drawing, painting and digital imaging class at CoFA as part of my ‘research’. Soma said she saw the show and offered a little criticism in contrast to my belated enthusiasm. She said the paintings were just literal representations of myself and that with my ability to paint I should start extending my self- portrait practice into what I have actually been researching - the performative nature of self-representation. I agree I should start extending my practice into new subjects.
Saga Moor, Self-Portrait as a Young Woman Series (2004-2006) as displayed in the 2006 Brett Whitely Travelling Scholarship Exhibition.
16 October 25 2006 Soma showed me a book on Cindy Sherman today and suggested how Sherman’s practice could relate to my series of paintings exploring the performative nature of self-representation. Sherman investigates these concepts photographically exploring the male and female image.
This is one of Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Photographs (#353), Cibachrome Print, “36X24”, 2000. It is a great image of a woman conforming to society’s expectations of grooming and status.
A quote in particular interested me: Male subjectivity resides in the image and or the object of his body, for women it is not so simple...the image of the other cannot be so easily distinguished for women as it seems for men. (Berger, 1972 Page 8.) I would like to apply more of this theory to my self-portraits and how I choose to represent myself in the future.
January 13 2007 I am glad to be more concerned with the practice of painting again rather than just the ‘virtual’ studio. I have been investigating Richard Grayson's article ‘Grasshopper Worlds’ from the 2002 Biennale catalogue. He discusses the idea of the 'Super fiction’. Artist Peter Hill coined the term in 1989. Hill defines Superfiction as “a visual or conceptual artwork, which uses fiction and appropriation to mirror the life of an invented individual.” Soma who is quite familiar with this concept explained to me earlier today the idea of a Superfiction by giving an example of how a novel may literally escape from the pages into 3 dimensions where I might parallel a life similar to her in a Superfictional diary.
Soma detailed that the premise of a Superfiction, as quoted by Peter Hill, “may involve a moment of deception but that the deceit was only a method
17 intended to condition the observers perception in a certain way.” Apparently this deception is not considered to be the goal of the practice but more so is supposed to push the boundaries of what is considered to be ‘art’.
Grayson related in his Biennale essay the idea of Superfiction to Sir John Manderville who published Manderville's Travels at the end of the 14th Century and reported one-eyed people in the Andaman Islands and dog- headed people in the Nicobar Islands. In relation to this fictional reporting Columbus thought that the story had been factual and planned his 1492 expedition after reading the book.
I started to understand what a Superfiction represented. Grayson sums up the premise of Superfiction as something that is constructed, and may extend from our personal lives to the media. “Let us wilfully operate along the fiction such a move would allow 'content' to operate as a game or construct rather than as an inalienable truth.” “On a more local scale the fact that our lives have shifted into the electronic has destabilised previous certainties.”
Grayson applies this example of a Superfiction to when Osama bin Laden claimed responsibility for the terrorist attacks when the immediate issue was whether it was ‘real’ or not. The article further explained that Photoshop has eroded our faith in the real world and that ‘the virtual world of computers presents uncertainty.’ After reading this I realised how ‘Superfiction’ can also translate into painting and the world of self-portraiture in which a person’s identity may be constructed or even a heightened truth.
February 15 2007 Today I went and saw The Swimmer, at the Chauvel cinema with Soma. It is a 1968 film directed by Frank Perry starring Burt Lancaster. This film was based on a short story by John Cheever and adapted by Eleanor Perry who was the wife of the director. Soma and I discussed that the movie seemed to contain a sardonic female perspective.
Essentially the story is an allegory of self-deception. Ned Merill is an apparently successful and charismatic businessman. The opening scene we see him emerging from a friend’s swimming pool. It is here he decides to swim through all of his ‘friend’s’ swimming pools to get home. Along the journey Merill is reconnected to the people who recount how he wronged them. The
18 viewer slowly senses the dark undertones that are occurring as the character of Ned continues on his journey unwittingly.
The image on the left is the original movie poster, on the right a more contemporary promotion.
One of my favourite scenes in this movie is when Ned encounters a little boy playing the flute at a lemonade stand below a tree. Ned asks if he can use the boy’s pool. But it is empty. The boy says that he cannot swim very well, so Ned says he will give the boy a swimming lesson anyway. They imitate swimming strokes along the pool. Afterward the boy is so excited he says that he has never been able to swim a lap before. Ned reassures him “If you make believe hard enough, then it’s true for you.”
Merill departs onwards to his swimming pools when he looks behind to see that the little boy is jumping on the diving board at the deep end. Ned quickly rushes over, scared that he is about to jump, thinking that maybe the boy has convinced himself that there is in fact water in the pool. The boy puts his fears at rest immediately, “I wasn’t going to jump in Mister! There’s no water there!”
The boy is not lost in a world of imagination, Merill is. Merill continues his journey being further tormented by people from his past, whilst continuing to convince himself that everything is fine. He finally arrives ‘home’. The tennis court is strewn with leaves, the lawn overgrown and the house is boarded-up. Ned bangs on the front door. There
19 is no answer. Even at the end Ned Merill is in denial, unable to acknowledge to himself that his present day life is in ruins. At the end of the film Soma and I discussed how the movie (made 40 years ago) is still relevant to high society and the pretentious soirées that continue to this day. If this movie were re-made it would be an art cult hit.
December 2 2007 Today I went and visited Soma at the end of her 6-month residency at Artspace Woolloomooloo in 2007.
I recall that when I first visited her she had begun working on a new series of paintings, very different from her usual work. She had begun painting zombies and horror characters. This was unusual, as she had normally painted intense yet contented appearing self-portraits or naturalistic, small-scale impasto paintings of Central Station. Her other subject was usually portraits of family and friends. She seemed concerned with the paint itself, the subject being secondary.
This is a photograph of Soma Garner aware of my presence whilst she is painting one of her zombie paintings.
Months later into her new series of work the painterly nature had remained, however the concept seemed to be more important to her now. She explained that she had undergone a period of time, which in retrospect had seemed like she was ‘The Living Dead’.
20 This resulted in the painting of zombies, creatures, slasher characters, monsters and people dressed in horror costumes where the paint applications had become replications of bloody smudges of horror, viscera and gore.
I remember at the time looking at all these paintings and noticing just how few self-portraits there were. The ‘zombies’ instead had become her self- portraits and expressions of her pain and anger also. These paintings of fictional characters could express what she herself could not.
I was somewhat surprised by this new series of work as one could interpret the work as self-indulgent. I can see what Soma was trying to express and for that reason I think it fortunate that she was able to actually paint it out of her system. I am sure that in the future she will move on and apply these performative subjects into a new series of work with a more coherently realised concept.
Some paintings from Soma’s Return of the Living Dead Series that I documented in her Artspace studio.
21 Soma Garner, Death Without a Staff and Werewolf, 2007
February 14 2008 Today I was thinking about Soma’s new series of work and thought about how it related to other women artists who have made autobiographical art works.
In 1999 Tracey Emin entered her work called ‘My Bed’ into the Turner Prize at the Tate Gallery in London.. She displayed home videos, watercolour portraits, and a wall of drawings done as a teenager, a quilt collage and two printed materials of her family’s past. At the centre of the installation was an unmade, dirty bed surrounded by overflowing ashtrays, used tissues, unwashed underwear and empty bottles of vodka.
I liked, how as an installation, she expressed the self-portrait beyond a portrait of her face and figure. She had put herself on display as both subject and object.
I recently read her autobiography Strangeland that I would describe as an internal extension of her autobiographical visual world.
22 Tracey Emin, My Bed, 1999, Tate Gallery, London.
I wonder if Soma would ever write about her experiences during her Masters, like a Superfiction where the reader would be forced to question whether the narrator was relating fact or fiction?
March 16 2008 I am currently with Wehttam Srebmut and Soma Garner in Swan Bay which is an hour and a half drive north from Newcastle.
Swan Bay always makes me feel like a pioneer. The soil is marshy and muddy. Red-belly black snakes crawl out from beneath the rocks when it has been hot and trees fall out of the soil like rotted teeth after a storm. There is an array of different marsupials as well as the threat of savage dingoes. The mosquitoes and blowflies make me break out in red itchy sores all over my face, arms and legs. Even the waters of the bay make me itch – sea lice abound.
I did some research into the history of Newcastle and its surrounds. Newcastle once had the reputation of a “hell hole” because it was the place in Australia where the most notorious convicts were sent.
After the last convicts were sent to Port Macquarie in 1823, the town became freed from penal law and became a pioneer settlement.
This morning I remarked to Soma that Swan Bay was so desolate that it would be a great location to film a horror movie! Soma who is a great fan of
23 the genre jumped at the idea, “You could film zombies lurking out of the bushes like George A Romero’s seminal film Night of the Living Dead!” “Yes!” I said to her “And then you could do paintings of this desolate landscape adding some sci-fi monsters or werewolves, Big-Foot or even an alien!” Soma was so excited; “I could paint a swamp and then add the Loch Ness Monster or the Creature from the Black Lagoon… “Or a giant Crab!” Wehttam Srebmut humorously quipped.
May 20 2008 Today I visited Soma’s painting exhibition at Flinders Street Gallery. Her images of Central Station railway, small portraits and owls all had an intense morbidity in reference to what I like to call ‘Lynchian Devices’ (i.e. film director David Lynch).
She had produced a row of barn owls; their glassy all-knowing eyes stared back at the viewer - angry, troubled, old, and wise. Witnesses to a crime perhaps? Ruthless, dark, dead... The owl as hunter and the hunted…
24 I could see that these owls were ‘Australian Gothic’ in theme and had been influenced by noir cinematic devices and themes used in David Lynch’s television series Twin Peaks. Part drama, murder mystery, psychological thriller and social critique Twin Peaks centres around the dark circumstances to the unsolved murder of town beauty queen Laura Palmer. Although she is dead, her presence remains symbolic in the swaying of trees, the gaze of owls and in the allegory of domestic objects. Beneath the veneer lies evil. Objects are imbued with new meanings.
I told Soma what I knew about symbols and allegory in relation to the Walter Benjamin quote about how modern day allegory was a way of “modern man making sense of the past gods of antiquity…” Perhaps these owls are a suggestion of the presence of a non-present self.
I felt that Soma could have pushed the installation further by placing the works in a context of banal related imagery such as a dark house at night, an owl at a window, a shadow of an owl through a window onto a disheveled rumpled bed, etcetera. I may suggest this to her when I see her next, perhaps she will consider my advice.
This is one of Soma’s self-portraits from her show at Flinders Street Gallery, Sydney.
25
The image on the left was used as the flyer cover for Soma’s show.
This is one of the three walls from the 2008 Flinders Street Gallery exhibition.
26 May 29 2008 Soma, her partner Srebmut and I have been planning a trip to the USA! I hope to explore themes of facades, masks and symbolism in relation to the performative representation of Self. We will all be going to New York, Washington, Philadelphia then San Francisco, Las Vegas and Hollywood in Los Angeles.
June 1 2008 What a day! We all saw so much today! It was our first day in New York and we went to Times Square. We saw theatre displays, street vendors drawing aspiring Paris Hilton starlets, flashing neon signage everywhere from Mr Peanut to deceased signs of Jerry Springer, rapper Lil’ Wayne Da Carter, Create Your Own Rock Band computer software, the Incredible Hulk blockbuster, Coca Cola and D.I.Y. Superstar home karaoke system. The signage was multi-simultaneous. Then there were the NYPD on horses and hosts of admiring tourists with cameras for eyes… At the end of the day we all discussed – was New York and all of this merchandising the result of an ‘American Dream Factory’?
Some of my photographs taken at Times Square.
A portrait street vendor in Times Square.
27 June 15 2008 Today Soma, Srebmut and I visited the 2008 Whitney Biennial in New York. A video artist that I very much enjoyed was Omer Fast’s production titled ‘Still from the Casting’, 2007. It addressed the current events in the US- Iraq War.
The work portrayed a US Army sergeant who recounts two incidents – a romantic liaison with a young German woman who mutilates herself which is then contrasted with the accidental shooting of an Iraqi boy. Very shocking subjects. The tales are woven together, in which on one screen documentary accounts and footage of the events play out and on the reverse of the same screen a dramatisation of the events using actors. Soma mentioned that what she enjoyed the most of the show was the psychological layering that was incorporated into the dual narrative. We both agreed however, the only thing clear in the video seemed to be the structured script of the actors.
Omer Fast’s production, Still from the Casting, 2007
June 16 2008 Today I was looking at Karen Kilimnik. She is a Philadelphia Artist. We saw her work also at the Whitney Museum as part of the 2008 Biennale in New York.
She had some small-scale paintings installed with a crystal chandelier. She ‘re-stages’ traditional subjects in a similar style to the 18th century and early Romanticist painters.
Taking as her license the idea of reproduction she has painted a series on Ballet dancers and Russia as well as referenced contemporary popular
28 culture within the traditions of baroque by painting movie stills such as Leonardo DiCaprio in The Man in the Iron Mask.
I like the slickness and confidence of Kilimnik’s glossy brushstrokes and her ability to craft these paintings. Soma thought that the paintings were somewhat mechanical and contrived.
Karen Kilimnik, Prince Charming, 20 x 24 inches, 1998 I noticed that it was painted in water-soluble oil on canvas, I wonder if it is because she paints in a small studio apartment.
June 20 2008 Today Soma, Wehttam and I went to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. We had started the day at the Rodin Museum. Soma had developed chronic bronchitis, probably from never having been exposed to high levels of air pollution.
The Philadelphia Museum of Modern Art is famous for its collection and entrance. These are the stairs immortalised by one Sylvester Stallone as the character Rocky who uses them as a measure of his will and determination. Recall the victory dance, punching of the cold morning air and the uplifting theme song? Tourists, gallery visitors and locals alike imitate this famous turning point scene and we all could not help ourselves to do the same despite the glare of the sun and thirty degree heat.
One of the paintings that I viewed, mesmerised for some time was ‘A portrait of the artists’ mother’ painted by Alice Neel. The painting depicted Neel’s mother in a chequered nightgown looking at her daughter over her round glasses.
29
The image on the left is Alice Neel’s Portrait of the Artists Mother and the image on the right is a photograph I took of Soma and Srebmut beneath the Rocky Balboa Statue! (I think we were all a little tired at this stage after running up all those stairs!)
I bought a book from the museum and read about her life later that evening. Alice Neel was born in 1900. She studied at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women. After completing her studies she married a Cuban painter Carlos Enriquez and soon immigrated to Havana. In 1926 she fell pregnant and following the birth of a girl she returned to her parents home. Sadly the girl Santillana died before the age of one from diphtheria. Immediately Neel became pregnant with her second child, Isabetta. In 1930 Carlos returned to Cuba and took Isabetta with him. Mourning the loss of her husband and daughter she suffered a massive nervous breakdown. After briefly being hospitalised Neel attempted suicide. She was placed in the suicide ward of the Philadelphia General Hospital. She was released one year later in 1931 and returned to her parents home. She then returned to New York and began to paint the local characters. Toward the end of the 1960s interest in her work intensified. The Women’s Movement made her an icon for feminists. In 1970 Neel was commissioned to paint feminist activist Kate Millet for the cover of Time magazine. In 1974 she was given a retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art and posthumously in 2000 having died in 1984.
I found Alice Neel’s personal life intriguing in relation to her painting career, which was seemingly strengthened by the personal pain and loss she experienced during her twenties. It was not until her thirties that she truly
30 started her artistic career. When I had told Soma what I had learned about Neel’s life we were both inspired as female artists; who are both soon to be approaching thirty.
July 9 2008 We have all now flown from New York to San Francisco (where we stayed for one week) ands now Los Angeles! Today we visited The Museum of Jurassic Technologies on Venice Boulevard in the Palms District of Los Angeles. David Hidebrand Wilson and Diana Wilson founded the Museum in 1989. The museum is a place of contradictions and it relates perfectly to my research of Superfiction.
Soma was reading that the museum claims to have, “specialised repository relics and artefacts from the Lower Jurassic, with an emphasis on those that demonstrate unusual or curios technological qualities.” As the Lower Jurassic Period ended more than 150 million years before hominoids least of all, before anything could be called ‘technology’ it is a classic paradigm of Superfiction - something absurd that is semi-based in reality but not at the same time.
Furthermore, I have been reading Mr Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder by Lawrence Weschler. It goes in depth into Wilson and his museum - a museum of wonder; similar to those in the late 16th and 17th centuries sometimes called wunderkammern or ‘wonder cabinets’.
Museum of Jurassic Technology - intriguing crumbling dice...
The Jurassic museum contextually correlated with the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia. The Mutter Museum is a scientific museum devoted to medical
31 anomalies such as the plaster cast of the “world famous Siamese twins of their conjoined livers”. It was here that I saw identical displays to the Museum of Jurassic Technologies i.e. a wax model of a woman with a human horn growing out of her forehead.
I recall that after leaving the Mutter I recall how disappointed I felt about the medical accuracies of the specimens and their display. It made me view the world purely scientifically and rather clinically without empathy for the human condition. I preferred the Museum of Jurassic Technologies; it was imaginative, ‘factual’ and wonderful at expressing knowledge without destroying the magic of it all.
July 15 2008 Soma, Srebmut and myself went to Madam Tussaud's on Hollywood Blvd. It is the ultimate illusion between reality and fantasy, where Hollywood actors are made out of wax - a fine line between reality and facade in a world of public personas and artifice.
Dorothy’s/Judy Garland’s Ruby Slippers at the Hollywood History Museum.
We then went to The Hollywood History Museum located also in Hollywood Blvd, which houses discarded stage props, sets and show biz curios from replica make-up dressing rooms of Max Factor to Dorothy’s ruby slippers from the Wizard of Oz of which Soma noted that the slippers were made infact from sequins not rubies nor glitter! There was also an entire room devoted to the life of Marilyn Monroe which judging by the alleged ‘suicide or not conspiracy’ could have passed as a Superfiction itself.
This room of Marilyn Monroe reminded me of the Museum of Contemporary Art in downtown L.A. that we had visited the day before. At the MOCA was the Marlene Dumas retrospective which contained a particularly memorable painting of Marilyn Monroe taken from an autopsy photograph. Here it seemed to me that Dumas had depicted Monroe as a shell of her former
32 bombshell self, a mask of her Superfictional life, her face like a sallow death mask.
As I had done a lot of previous work concerning Digital Imaging, I couldn’t help but think about how all the objects of movie making, which you hold to be authentic, are attached to an aura similar to a digitally reproduced image. The facade or prop is seen as a truth but it is essentially a simulacra or illusion.
Marlene Dumas, Death photo of Marilyn Monroe, from the ‘Measure Your Own Grave Retrospective of Dumas’ at MOCA, CA.
July 29 2008 As Soma, Srebmut and I were eating our cereal for breakfast at the Hollywood Highlands Youth Hostel we could not help but discuss the down sides of the city. We all agreed that walking down the Hollywood Walk of Fame with people dressed as movie icons felt as though you could almost slip into the Hollywood movie making world yet amongst all the glitter, glamour and memorabilia was dire poverty, the homeless and unemployed drawn to the city as well. Not even the land of fantasy could escape reality.
33 The skyline of downtown Los Angeles – as stated is in fact the home of many homeless.
Hollywood Boulevard shop mannequins
September 12 2008 The holiday had to come to an end eventually! I am now back in Oz from the USA. I have re-enrolled to complete my Masters of Fine Arts. I have a semester left to complete the thesis component. I am continuing my research concerning ideas of the performative and the gaze of the subject. I am reading Lacan’s The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis.
In the chapter, The Split Between the Eye and the Gaze; Lacan states that “to recognise oneself in a portrait and a mirror one imitates the image one imagines the other sees." and that this “imitative reproduction of the self- image always involves the eye of the other. So it is this performative nature
34 of portraiture that complicates the traditional claim of the camera or portrait to reproduce the ‘authentic’ real.” Lacan’s quote relates to photography however it relates just as much to self-representational painting also. Soma, who has also been reading a lot of Lacan, mentioned that in a sense it seemed that this could also relate to a Superfictional self-portrait.
September 22 2008 I just found out that Soma has been accepted into the 2008 Portia Geach Memorial Prize, a women’s painting prize with Self-portrait as Medusa - A Projected Myth. We met up over coffee and she told me she had to write an artist statement concerning the painting. Informally she admitted that she would like to include something about what had influenced the subject choice of ‘Medusa’. “It is quite something when you have to question everything that you thought of as true.”
Soma Garner, Self-Portrait as Medusa - A Projected Myth. Oil on Belgian linen work with dimensions 60cm X 60cm
35 When I got to the SH Irvin Gallery I was interested by what she had written.
The ‘Self-Portrait as Medusa - A Projected Myth’ is myself performing as a representation of Medusa whilst also playing with notions surrounding the gaze and the viewer. This is part of a current series of paintings I am working on exploring themes of Hollywood, Masks and Facades in relation to the self-portrait. I wanted to show that Medusa is a projected myth, she will not turn the viewer to stone and I am not Medusa! I like the idea that portraiture is performative and that self-representation can also be a way to expose the myths that can be projected onto women.
September 28 2008 I read an interesting essay in Interfaces about the act of self-portraiture, Page 56 by Mimi Y.Yang. She offered a different take on Frida Kahlo’s self- portraiture, that her continual representation of the self could have been the result of Frida’s isolation and loneliness. The article stated that the representation of herself was a diary of how she felt and her own voice to herself. I thought about what this meant and saw how it may relate to my friend Soma and her own self-portraiture practice at times.
November 2 2008 I went and saw Soma give her artists talk at the S.H Irvin Gallery regarding the Portia Geach prize. It was the first day after her birthday. She told me she has just turned 29. She appeared very nervous before the speech and appreciated the moral support that I represented. I was interested to find out a few more things about what she hadn’t even shared with us at the time of being there!
She explained that when she had got back to her studio in Sydney from the USA in August she began painting the Medusa but the more she painted, the more she realised the symbolic nature of what it was beginning represent. She painted her eyes looking away from the viewer initially similar to Carravagio’s Medusa with the severed head who stares directly at the viewer.
36
The painting of Medusa by Caravaggio. It is painted with oil on a circular convex leather shield with a diameter of 55.5cm. The original is located in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence.
Some of the photographs that I took of Soma for her Performative Role as Medusa!
She initially began her painting by sketching herself wearing the headpiece, “being like Rembrandt or an actor on stage”. This gave her a point of departure from her usual self-portraiture practice. She noted that although she had taken preparatory photos, she had not only worked from them because it makes the painting “look flat, lifeless” so she also used a mirror.
37
More photographs taken of Soma as Medusa.
This is a preliminary study of one of Soma’s Medusa paintings.
In her artist talk that she employed a different technique of using glazes on Belgian linen. It was interesting to see the use of these traditional materials contemporised through the use of a novelty, rubber headpiece.
38 Apparently Soma had encountered a few health problems from painting with glazes and varnishes. At one point after having applied a gloss varnish in an unventilated room with a cheap heater on high, she had felt light-headed and found it difficult to breathe. When she closed her eyes she hallucinated brown octopuses waving their tentacles “in brown spongy air”.
November 5 2008 I have been reading about Artemesia Gentileschi and painting. Artemesia was rare because she was a female painter within the tradition of ‘patriarchal’ painting. Artemesia was apparently taken advantage of sexually when she was 17, and the affair was taken to court. As the main protagonist in the first public rape case, she was humiliated, had her tendons tightened to prove she was not lying and after all of this received a dubious reputation as the trial ended without a clear verdict. In 1611 she was forced to leave Rome and married in Florence soon receiving commissions, her artistic skills being known to all as an accomplished portrait and biblical narrative painter.
I found this information frustrating, but could see the strength in Artemisia’s resilience, “I shall show what a woman is capable of.. you will find Caesar’s courage in the soul of a woman.” (Artemisia Gentilsechi 1611)
Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith Decapitating Holofernes, (c.1618)
November 6 2008 I just met up with Soma for a coffee; she was wearing wrist braces on each arm. I asked her what they were for. She has Repetitive Strain Injury caused from over-typing her Masters Exegesis.
39 She is severely limited in any painting, computer activities or heavy lifting. She is doing weights to try to strengthen up her back and arms, which appears to be helping somewhat. The condition sounds truly awful, which led me to do some research about artists with a physical disability.
Monet in his later years had cataracts, which made his palette dark and muddied. His “paintings grew more abstract as his eye problems increased”. (Stanford Medical 2007).
Frida Kahlo had considerable pain in her life after a tram accident had splintered her pelvis, preventing her from being able to have children. Frida Kahlo’s (1907–1954) painting called "Two Frida's" (1939) oil on canvas portrays her two selves connected by one of Frida’s miniature portraits of partner Diego Riviera as a boy. From its red oval frame a vein travels through ‘both’ her hearts, surgical pincers held on the lap of the rejected Frida stems the flow of blood from Riviera the philanderer. She holds her own hand – she is her only companion.
I realised Frida’s ability to express pain in her work and her strength to paint whilst in pain. The ‘Two Fridas’ also in a strange way reminded me of Soma Garner and myself. Two selves connected by our imagination and friendship.
Frida Kahlo, The Two Frida's, 1939
40 November 7 2008 Today I looked at a fabulous little painting by James Ensor called ‘Scandalised Masks’ This painting depicts two masked protagonists. A man sitting at a chair wearing a mask and a woman entering the room masked as well. The composition is so tight and the ambiguous narrative created is so life- like it almost appears as a film still. The painting’s use of little virtuoso, staccato and impressionistic tonal colours reminded me of one of my favourite Post-Impressionist painters Edward Vuillard. I would also like to try and create compositions out of characters where I construct narratives out of figures. I asked Soma about it and she suggested that we sit at a table or do everyday things whilst wearing masks. Then we could do some sketches from that to make into paintings. I think it is a fabulous idea!
This is Scandalised Masks by James Ensor. It is creepy and atmospheric.
December 12 2008 I am missing travelling. I miss the freedom of being yourself in the present time, without preconceived opinions from others and everything being new…
Today I watched Jonathan Livingston Seagull, a film adapted from the novel by Richard Bach. It is a great movie with 70s psychedelic overtones of crimson skies and I know that it is also one of Soma’s favourite films. The inspiring story tells of a seagull that wants to learn how to fly higher than the rest of the flock and in return is ostracised.
Jonathan the seagull goes onto learn about the wider world and comes back to show them his findings but is still excluded. In the end he comes across another seagull that was also banished from the flock and he realises that he has a new flock to fly with… Which reminds me a little of Soma and me!
41 “Don’t believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitations. Look with your understanding”. I actually brought this film up to Soma and related to having experienced the same feelings too since returning from the USA. We then made a pact that we would do more travelling in the future together.
Jonathan ready for lights, camera and action!
March 25 2009 Today I went to the Art After Hours Talk at the AGNSW with Soma. I invited her along as she still has Referred pain and I thought it would be good for her to at least get out and see some Artists talk. The presenter was Richard Glover with local Australian artists Immants Tillers, Michelle Hiscock and Euan Mc Cloud. The lecture was about their individual responses to the Monet show. Immants Tiller spoke of how Monet had the ability to make paintings emanate light and iridise beauty. Michelle Hiscock spoke about Monet’s ability to make a singular view interesting, such as a flat foreground. Euan McCleod expressed Monet’s ability to paint what one cannot see, such as the sense of a tree growing from the earth. What I loved about the Monet show was the oil painting technique - all those beautiful brushstrokes! Though Soma expressed that she required a figurative composition or narrative to fully capture her interest.
The painting on the left is Monet’s Waterlilies; on the right is his Field of Poppies in which figures seem to be used just for scale.
42 April 1 2009 Today I visited Soma at her new studio space, built on the top floor of an old sewing factory in St. Peters. She is currently preparing for her upcoming Masters of Fine Arts Show and is in physical pain trying to get it all together for the deadline of April 30th. The illusion that making these paintings and writing this thesis has been easy is definitely something I think she should demystify.
In her studio Soma has set up photographs, found images and memorabilia collected from her recent trip to the USA that she is currently making paintings about. Apart from the physical pain she is going through something of a mini-crisis on how to conclude the new body of work so that it is coherent for her Masters Of Fine Arts by Research Examination.
I was shown a selection of new paintings depicting architectural facades. I suggested to Soma that perhaps she could relate these random images more cohesively by actually pushing the narrative further. This could be achieved in the final installation. For example, she could display a self-portrait with a series of architectural facades and a series of masks. Together they may form a collective story, and a configurative narrative concerned with the themes and notions at hand such as the performative nature of the self and how representation may just be a mask taken at face value. I hope that her show goes well and that she does not push herself more than she can physically withstand.
Soma’s studio at St Peters.
43 April 20 2009 I have been working further on my ideas of facades by painting theatrical motifs such as film-set facades, a Frankenstein figurine, Bettie Page posing, a wax figure of Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, adult lingerie mannequins in Hollywood, a ‘witch’ walking amongst tourists and pedestrians, cult movie posters and tabloid magazine articles. I have painted 16mm film projectors, videocassettes and stills cameras – symbols of obsolete technologies. I feel like this is the complete end result of everything that I have studied and researched in my painting studies. I believe that if ever something was to happen to me and I were forced to have a last show it would only include the most resolved works of this latest series. I feel that my work has finally moved from my self-portrait practice into the world of performance. I feel that my paintings of masks and facades play with the concepts of surface and authenticity I have been researching. I feel that my painting practice has come to completion.
Stage Facade Mannequin of Dorothy Obsolete Technology
April 25 2009 The world is entering a Global Depression. The Australian Dollar is worth 63 U.S cents. There is an economic financial crisis. Local coffee shops are offering ‘Credit Crunch Specials’. The Federal Government is offering ‘stimulus packages’ to prime the economy and yet there was one of the biggest crowds ever to have attended the AGNSW Monet Show. I believe that there is nothing better to bring more money back into the economy than the arts.
Art is not a dispensable item; it also provides the community with a ‘soul’. Artists are also workers and provide an economic and spiritual force. There is record that the entertainment industry previously thrived in the depression
44 despite the world experiencing hardship. I believe that art will always be needed.
, Saga Moor, Self-portrait as Eternity Symbol
September 10 2009 I have organised for us to have a painting trip in the central Australian desert town of Paintyawa. With a global swine flu pandemic, Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett and Patrick Swayze recently passing away it will be good to re-connect with the forces of nature. What could possible go wrong?
September 15 2009 Soma and I are finally out here in the wilderness of the central desert!!! It is amazing being here! I am so happy! The days have been full of painting en plein air. Something strange to note though was last night whilst Soma and I were cooking our dinner around the campfire; we both noticed a faint florescent green glow in the horizon of the setting night sky. It was unusual though in this vastness, perhaps things like satellites are more noticeable here? What intrigued me about this light was that it appeared to get closer, as though it was watching us… Silly really, I guess to think that, but when your out in the desert you cannot help but let your imagination get the better of you!
September 16 2009 Soma and I went for a drive and have found a new campsite. It is more remote and the closest town is at least a day away. The desert is so hot during the day and the night seems to drop below zero.
45 More unusual things are happening. That fluorescent green light that I have been seeing in the night sky appears to be coming closer. The light is now glinting and hovering above us during the day. I grabbed Soma but she just missed seeing it. Is it real or not?
September 17 2009 I am going to try and recount what happened to me today so as to try and make sense of it all. The fluorescent green light appeared again this morning. It appeared to be the shape of a solid oval of metal. I went to investigate it, so while Soma was still asleep I wandered for hours into the dawn, excitedly following it. Eventually the green object stopped and then moved closer towards me, and then literally above me. Its shape was more like a spaceship. It glinted above me like a beautiful gemstone. All of a sudden I was blinded by a white light the force of which threw me to the ground. The spaceship then sped out of the earth’s stratosphere faster than any speed jet that I have ever seen.
I made my way back to the campsite. When I looked down at my hands they were fluorescent green and I fainted into a shocked Soma’s arms. When I woke up, Soma examined my eyes. She held up her pocket mirror to my face. I looked like the Creature from the Black Lagoon. My skin was bright green and my eyes were completely black.
Soma seems to be handling this situation very well; she keeps trying to reassure me that I will be better by tomorrow. I hope so, because as I hold my pen to write this, it seems as though my fingers are growing as I am having difficulty holding my pen…I will rest now…
September 18 2009 When I woke up this morning my hands, legs, my entire body was GINORMOUS!! I did not want Soma to see me in this state and be completely hysterical so I thought it was time now for me to find my own campsite.
As I walked I realised that my head was above the century old gum trees, every step seemed to travel me kilometres at a time. I began to feel a sense of freedom, and as the hours continued, I realised that my fluorescent green skin was preventing me from hunger - I only needed the sunshine to be fed.
46 I came across a creek bed, and as though I had been doing this my whole life, I gracefully stooped over to take a gulp full. The riverbed almost ran out of water. I must be at least 30 metres tall… Afternoon was approaching and I realised that I needed clothes to fit me. I felt as though I had a ferocious amount of strength and I tried to rip out a gum tree from the sand. I was strong enough so I ripped out 3 more and with 2 in each hand I used them like mops to soak up the mud in the riverbank. I applied the trees muddy surface to my body adding a layer of mud and leaves, protecting me from the harsh sun. The more I walked it seemed that I was growing larger, judging by my size to the local mountains and boulders, I think about 50 metres. The fast growth of my body seemed to be causing a strain on my heart, which causes me to need to sit to rest. After regaining my breath I felt better. I stared at the landscape and it seemed so barren that I thought I would try to make a painting, using the desert as my canvas. At this stage it appeared I was in a mud canyon. I scooped out different coloured ochres making yellow ochre, reds, blacks, blue and white. I poured water onto the crushed ochre and then dipped the trees into the paint like brushes. I painted the land, the sky and myself and before I knew it night-time had approached so I made a fire from the trees and shelter out of boulders. I retired peacefully into the night following writing in my journal using my teeth to hold my pen.
September 23 2009 As I write this, I know that it will be my last entry. I am alone in the wilderness with howling winds. My gargantuan heart cannot take the pressure of my 50-metre frame. Let me recount what happened this morning as it all seems like such a blur. I went into town. I needed water, as I had swallowed every remaining drop of water from riverbeds, I needed some ‘damn’ water before I dehydrated. As soon as I reached town, unprovoked, people started screaming. I tried to tell them that I meant these people no harm, but all that escaped from my lips was a bellowing roar. From days of isolation in the arid country in silence I was not aware that my voice would be so loud. I felt jabs of pain around my ankles, as I looked down, I realised that the locals were swinging axes into me. This irritation of being misconceived in my intentions angered me quickly. In a red rage I crushed my feet through their pathetic little buildings, picking up their cars as though toys. The townspeople began shooting their guns at me at which added further fuel to
47 my fire. I roared furiously. These humans were going to feel the brunt of an angry woman’s wrath! I proceeded to fling my arms around creating chaos. A stream of army tanks arrived firing canons and missiles were launched from aircraft. None of this had any affect on me until a missile explosion crashed directly into my chest catching me off guard. I fell with immense impact creating a giant blanket of red dust that dwarfed the entire town. Painfully I dragged myself up, limping back into the desert far from the ruined town. My time is drawing closer to the end as I struggle to breathe, my fragile over-proportioned heart unable to deal with the strain of being shot. I feel I was always destined to become this 50-metre woman. I have learnt so much more about myself during this experience. My only hope now is for my journal to be found so that I may be able to explain what happened to me… Farewell.
48 Epilogue By Soma Garner
Saga Moor’s Body was never discovered out in the wilderness, and after months of deploying search parties, it was concluded that her demise would always remain a mystery. Her diary was found though, in the centre of an elaborate rock formation of arrows, stretching for kilometres from the town that she had destroyed.
Saga Moor’s transformation into the 50-Metre Woman and the epic battle that ensued was responsible for the dust cloud that passed from Broken Hill through to Sydney, Queensland and New Zealand on the 15th September 2009.
Saga Moor was to me however, more than a person responsible for a mass tabloid, she was my best friend.
Whilst organising her painting retrospective, I was overwhelmed by the boxes of paintings that were stored at her parents home - approximately 400 small paintings housed in about 12 boxes, 25 larger paintings (unresolved) and hundreds of drawings, gouaches and inks - the result of the duration of her Masters of Fine Arts Painting Degree.
It was unfortunate that the final exhibition of her work did not include any of these previous paintings but as she had expressed in this journal, she had wanted her final show to be the exhibition of only her most recent series of work.
I hope through this collection of journal entries, that Saga Moor will always remain a part in our lives.
49 The Retrospective of Saga Moor Flinders Street Gallery, Sydney April 15th - April 29th 2009
50 The Dream Factory Wall, 2009
Detail of Saga Moor Retrospective, Hollywood /Dream Factory Wall, 2009
51 Detail of Dream Factory Wall, 2009
Retrospective of Saga Moor 2009: Wall of Obsolete Technologies, Dimensions Variable
52
Detail of Obsolete Wall of Technolgies, Mixed Media, 2009
The Retrospective of Saga Moor - Wall of Obsolete Technology, 2009
53 1 2
3 4
1. Wax Mannequin of Dorothy, gouache on paper, 2008 2. Self-Portrait in Hour-Glass, oil on board, 2008 3. Psycho House, oil on canvas, 2009 4. Self Portrait in Stripes, oil on canvas, 2006
54 1 2
3 4
1. Old Worlds, oil on canvas, 2009 2. Night of the Living Dead, oil on canvas board, 2008 3. Dog with Skeleton Armour, oil on canvas, 2007 4. Self-Portrait with Saga Moor, oil on canvas, 2009
55 1 2
3 4
1 Creature from the Black Lagoon, oil on canvas, 2009 2 Flashlight, oil on canvas, 2008 3 Swan Bay, oil on board, 2008 4 Unmasked, oil on canvas, 2008
56 References
Biennale of Sydney (13th) “2002 Biennale of Sydney. The World May Be Fantastic”. Bal, Mieke, 1994, “The Artemisia Files, Oxford Phaidon”. Bach, Richard, 1973 “Jonathan Livingston Seagull”, London, and Sydney, Pan. Benjamin, Walter, 1968, “Illuminations”. Berger, 1972, “Ways Of Seeing”. Chesler, Phyllis, 2005, “Women and Madness”, Macmillan (page 16). Burns, Bob, 2002, “It came from Bob's basement: Exploring the Science Fiction and Monster Movie archive of Bob Burns”. Chapman, H, Perry, 1990, “Rembrandts Self Portraits: A study in Seventeenth Century Identity”, Princeton University Express. Dexter, Emma edited by Tanya Barson, 2005, “Frida Kahlo”, London, Tate Publishing. Dube, Wolf Dieter, 1983, “Expressionists and Expressionism”. Feldman, Melissa E, 1994, “Face-off: The portrait in recent Art”. Charlotte Salomon, “Life or Theatre”, Phaidon. Jones, Amelia, 2002, “Performing the Other as Self: Cindy Sherman and Laura Aguilar Pose the Subject”. Keane, Stephen, 2005, “Cine Tech Film, Convergence and New Media”. Lacan, 1995, “Reading Seminar XI: Lacan’s Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis”. Liana Be Girolami Cheney, 2000, “Self Portraits by women Painters”. Pollok, Griselda, “Perseus and the Gorgon Head-The Medusa Story”, Hants England. Miles, Peter, 2006, “Tracey Emin: Works 1963-2006”. Peggy Pheelan, “Unmarked the politics of performance”. Rideal, Liz, 2001, “Mirror, mirror: Self-portraits by Women Artists”. Richard, Alaen, “Representation, Illusion and Cinema”. Schatz, Thomas, “Old Hollywood/New Hollywood Ritual, Art and Industry”, UMI Research Press, Smith, Sidonie and Julia Watson, editors, “Interfaces, Women, Autobiography, Image, Performance”. University of Michigan Press. Steinberg, Michael, 2006,“Reading Charlotte Salomon”, Ithica N.Y Cornell University Press. Sternfield, Jonathan, 1990, “The look of horror: Scary moments from scary movies.” Stocchi, Francesco, 2007, “Cindy Sherman: A play of selves”, Milan, Electa. Sund, Judy, 2002, “Van Gogh”, London Phaidon Press. Mimi Y.Yang, “Articulate Image, Painted Diary: Frida Kahlo’s Autobiographical Interface”. Michigan Press. Weidemann, Christiane, 2008, “50 women artists you should know”. Woods, Paul A, 1997, “Weirdsville USA: the obsessive universe of David Lynch”. Maria Warner, “Phantasmagoria, Spirit Visions, Metaphors and Media in the 21st century”. Wands, Bruce, 2006, “Art of the Digital Age”.
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