Angela Blakely & David Lloyd

26 February – 28 March 2010

In 1994 Angela Blakely and David Lloyd were commissioned by the History section of the Australian Army to accompany the first rotation of troops to Rwanda and photo document Australia’s involvement. In 2006 and 2008 they returned to Rwanda and discovered that for many survivors there is no life after the genocide. They have lost, and continue to lose, their health, their dignity, their security and their liberty. Justice remains elusive. Never Again makes visual the voice of the survivors of the Rwandan genocide.

Ten days have passed since I visited the exhibition, Never Again, and the impact of the images and the emotions I felt are fading. As I sit here and try and pull back the memories of my responses to the exhibition, I find myself thinking about the women whose images I saw, whose cries I heard and whose tissues were also there as a tangible reminder of their sorrow.

I felt a kinship with these women, a sisterhood of sorrow shared and it was important that I read their stories, that I pay homage to their grief. I was also very conscious of the need to protect myself, so as not to be swallowed by their grief. I was thankful that I could step back and have some respite from their pain and as I caught my breath, I was very conscious that there is no respite for these women, that the images they keep inside their heads and the emotions they felt will never fade.

I moved to a perspex box half filled with yellowing tissues and tentatively picked up the headphones provided. As I listened to the taped cries of the women in the crying room, I began to cry myself. I listened to their tears for as long as it took me to read the text assosciated with that part of the exhibition, text that I can not remember a single word of. I was thankful that I could stop listening to the sound of their pain and then wondered if they had  anyone left to listen to them and so I listened again.

I was pleased that someone had thought to save the tissues, to save the women’s tears. Tissues are so easily discarded and they were a powerful symbol of how easily a human life can be discarded.

Photographs in subdued colours and muted sepia tones,of dead flowers and an empty chair in an empty room. Images of discarded prosthetics, a church where the villagers went for sanctuary and were slaughtered instead, as well as portraits of some of the survivors line this wall. Next to each photograph is a printed block of text that tells the story behind the photo. Each block of text starts the same way, I met a woman today. I met a man today and each story demands to be read.  Each story needs to be re-told.

One of the stories accompanying the photographs was Marcella’s.

I met a woman today, Marcella told me what life was like for her during the genocide: watching her husband be killed; knowing her children were slaughtered; feeling the spear stab her pregnant abdomen. she related how “the neighbours, the militia and the soldiers came to kill us with guns,machetes and clubs”. what Marcella wouldn’t explain is how the women were killed. She simply said it was “inappropriate”.

And  so the stories go on, each one as compelling as the next.

I met a woman today. she was sitting on a gravestone at the memorial museum, weeping quietly.She held a tissue in her hand and wiped her tears. Walking past, I didn’t want to interrupt her. She was sitting on one of the nine tombs that hold the bodies of 250,000 people – only some of those killed in Kigali during the genocide.

I wondered for whom she was crying?

On the other side of the room, I sit facing a long line of photographs on another wall. Large black  photographs with small lines of text with a name and age in the centre. A powerful series of photographs, depicting a whole family decimated. The Mother, one of only four survivors left from a large, extended family is the centrepiece on this wall of death and her eyes are compelling.

A line from my journal, written as I tried to collect my thoughts and process my emotions.

As I sit opposite the wall and look at the Mother’s face I am compelled to reflect on what it means to be a woman, a mother, a daughter.

The pain of having nearly all of your extended family wiped out was reflected in the Mother’s eyes and I sat staring into her eyes for a long time thinking about how we are so vulnerable and how easily it could be any woman staring back at me. How women and children are generally the hidden, silent casualties in war,how women are viewed as legitimite spoils of war and being extremely grateful for the ability to do so I walked away from the woman’s pain.

It is nearly time to send the pigs off to be killed. This is the first time that we have ever sent animals off the property to be slaughtered and I don’t really like it. So I have been procrastinating about ringing up the slaughterman and the girls just keep on growing.

We could kill the girls here but we dont have anywhere to hang them after they are done. So I have made the hard decision to have a professional slaughterman do the job. I have no idea how we are going to get them into the trailer to transport them there but The Spouse is working on a plan.

I felt a bit foolish asking the slaughterman how he would kill the girls but it was very important for me to know the details, as some people just cut the pigs throats and let them bleed out, in order to collect the blood to make black pudding. He shoots them first and then cuts their throats once they are dead, so I was very relieved. I am still a bit worried that they will be in a pen together when they are killed and I will have to ask if they can be separated. The Spouse thinks I am being silly and says the girls will become more stressed if they are separated.

Ack! It is hard being a carnivore.

Duck season has opened and I am always reminded of the scene in a Bugs Bunny cartoon where Daffy and Bugs are arguing about whether it is duck or rabbit season and Elmer just blasts Daffy anyway.

This long weekend hunters have headed off to shoot ducks and protesters have headed off to protest and disrupt the hunt. A protestor has already been injured.

Police say the rescue helicopter was called about 9:00am (AEST) to retrieve a 35-year-old woman who was part of a campaign to disrupt the hunt at Moulting Lagoon.

The woman, from Battery Point, was thought to have been bitten by a snake but it was later diagnosed as a suspected marine sting to her foot.

I find it interesting that the woman was from an inner city suburb and then I wonder what sort of shoes she was wearing. And all I can think of is ’silly girl’ and shake my head.

The problem with these sort of emotive issues is that everyone gets all het up about eating poor cute little duckies and furry little wallabies. They ponce about the place waving placards and blowing whistles and then on the way home they go to the supermarket and buy a package of perfectly wrapped and presented pork chops, or skinless chicken breasts. They congratulate themselves on a job well done and don’t even give a thought to how the majority of our food is produced.

Where are the protestors with their placards at the top flight restaurants that serve wagyu beef. I dont see them being all disruptive in the deli section of woolworths protesting the hideous conditions pigs are kept in, to give us cheap bacon. The hypocrisy of it all does my head in.

Now to totally change the subject before I really get worked up. I used the contact form on the bloggies page and got the breakdown of the votes for the Best Australian/ New Zealand category. God had already sent me the breakdown (thanks God) but I went ahead and asked for my own anyway as I have always been a tad suspicious of direct messages from God.

Not Drowning, Mothering: 800

Frog Ponds Rock: 533

Today Is My Birthday!: 477

Life and Other Crises: 453

Mamamia: 430

Not Drowning, Mothering.

I went to Veronica’s yesterday and watched Amy bounce on the trampoline as Vonnie pressed refresh on the bloggie’s twitter page.

I am thrilled to bits to be writing out a congratulatory blog post to the NDM, as her blog is well written and very funny. She writes about her  life with humour and honesty and I find myself nodding along in recognition. You really should do yourselves a favour and go on over and check out her blog, I have no doubt you will add it to your favourites.

I had a small visitor for a couple of hours yesterday afternoon and together we went outside and played in the mud.

Then we went down and fed the pigs and had a bit of a chat about how delicious they are going to be.

We went and raided the fruit trees and Amy found that she didn’t like the furry skin on the peaches but was more than happy to munch away on the plums.

This year has been a really good year for most of my fruit trees, due to a wetter than average winter and spring. We normally struggle for water up here and I am really pleased with how much fruit my trees have produced. Amazing what a bit of water does for a plant.

The whole time that Amy and I were pottering around outside, Harry the dog was at our side. Harry loves the apple trees as he is sure that those green balls are just for him.

And finally here is a photo of my latest garden project. The spouse cut an old water tank in half for me. This autumn and winter I will be busily filling it up with sheep poo, mushroom compost and whatever else I can get my hands on. I am going to turn all the vegie garden into a series of raised beds over the next two years, as sitting on a milk crate and weeding is just so much more civilized that kneeling down on my dodgy knees.

Once Amy had gone home I went to turn my laptop on and found that my grand daughter had decorated it for me. That was my day yesterday, how was yours?

Yesterday morning I was trying to work out what I could do with a kilo or so of chicken drumsticks. As I was thinking through my cooking options I also followed a train of thought to do with healthy cooking when you are living below the poverty line. There is so much negative publicity out there relating to low incomes being synonomous with poor eating habits. On and on whirred my brain, busily formatting blog posts until I slammed back into a wall of negativity relating to that blasted review.

I stood in the kitchen chopping vegetables and stewing on the fact that the reviewer had spat out the word recipes like it was a curse. And that moment was when I finally let go of the review. Of course I occasionally share recipes I am passionate about good food as well as playing in the mud. Tosser.

So I need to say a big thankyou to everyone that has humoured me whilst I have been sulking over that stupid arsed review. I am finally over it now and that really is all down to you, my dear internetz. Whilst I was analyzing my responses to the review and giggling at some of your responses to my post about the review, I also had a bit of a think about my blog and why I am blogging. The main reason that I am still blogging is because I really enjoy the ongoing conversation that I am having with you my readers. Thanks to blogging I now have a large circle of online friends and I am not lonely anymore.

Your ideas for the dragon eggs have made the air around me crackle with creative energy. Your feedback, friendship and support gives me respite from the sadness that threatens to overwhelm me. You have all given me a great gift and I am thankful.

So back to the chicken,I threw them into a large pot with a chopped onion, three or four cloves of garlic, some carrots and potatoes. I tied together some sage leaves and fresh thyme from the garden I also threw in a good shake of mixed herbs and a pinch of salt. I simmered the pot on top of the woodheater until the drumsticks were cooked through and then I fished them out and put them aside for later.

Somehow I managed to get sidetracked by twitter and the telephone and before I knew it it was tea time and the spouse was looking a tad gaunt. I kept the peace by giving him a drumstick and shooing him back into his cave shed. I browned off the drumsticks in some olive oil and more garlic and dished them up with mashed potatoes, peas and gravy. Simple comfort food for a Sunday night.

Today I will tart up the soup base that I made yesterday, by throwing in some greenery from the garden, kale and silverbeet. I have a heap of zucchinis that I was given so I will probably throw some zuke in to the pot as well. I normally have frozen celery tops in the freezer that I keep specifically for soups and stock but I have just run out and the celery in the garden is looking very sad.

This pot of vegetable soup will be our main meal tonight and probably lunch tomorrow.I will also freeze three portions for my lunch this week whilst I am at the studio. So I think that I got my moneys worth out of that batch of drumsticks.

And just because I can here is a photo of the moon I took last night. I couldn’t be bothered setting up the tripod so I just went outside and pointed at the moon and hoped the shots wouldn’t be too blurry. They weren’t. Yay.

Going into the studio for an extra day has thrown my schedule at home out of kilter and I know it will take me a few weeks to get used to it. I am surprised by the fact that it is nearly March, as time seems to be just racing away. I looked at my blog and thought, I need to let my internet friends know what I am up to and pfft another three days just vanished into thin air.

So here I am sitting here by myself in the quiet of the morning with the thoughts and words swirling away in my head. I keep on coming back to that blasted review and the phrase this is boring slides into my head. Once I start to second guess myself and lose the flow of the story the words start misbehaving and I struggle to string them together. Sorry.

Yesterday our theory group had a full day in the city visiting the museum, the art school, art forum and two exhibitions. It was a harrowing day emotionally as one of the exhibitions, Never Again, a photographic essay of the survivors of the Rwandan massacre was very confronting. As was the subsequent presentation about it and photojournalism. I haven’t fully processed the information and sorted it into its respective boxes in my brain yet. But I will do that here in the next few days, as I think my response to the photos of the survivors of the genocide in Rwanda needs to be shared.

So still reeling from the photo presentation we went up to Cast gallery in North Hobart to see an exhibiton by Vernon Ah Kee. This exhibiton was also very thought provoking and deserves a post of its own as well.

I am working through some ceramic ideas using the plaster slabs and I think I will spend tomorrow making and photographing a series of ceramic ideas. I should be doing the housework and laundry but instead I will be making a bigger mess of my already chaotic home. Oh dear.

My friend Robin Roberts, a talented photographer is going to send me some lovely landscape photos of Tasmania, especially for your viewing pleasure. Yay. These next photos are indicative of the type of work that he does. Robin is a recent arrival to Tasmania and as most people do he has fallen head over heels in love with Tassie and travels all over the place snapping away merrily.

There are more photos over here.

Forgive me!

I start back at the studio this Thursday and I will be doing an awful lot of glaze testing to get the colours and textures of the eggs just so. I will keep you posted with photos of the tests.

I have been thinking a lot about the eggs and I don’t want to say that they are dragon eggs, that will be just between you and me. I want the people that see them and especially the children to make up their own minds.

Last Thursday “The Spouse” and I went down to the river. I had packed half a bag of clay in the car along with my rolling pin and a large board, just in case the fish weren’t biting.It is hard to concentrate on fishing when the ceramic juices are flowing so I rolled out a heap of clay slabs and pressed them into the rocks.

Here they are drying out a bit, so that I could safely transport them home.

Later on that evening I used the slabs of clay to make plaster press moulds.

Here  are the finished press moulds. I have no idea what I am going to do with them yet other than some vague ideas of rolling the dragon eggs over them for some texture.I might press slabs of clay into them and use them as sections of the dead albatross bowls or for texture in a sculptural piece. The possibilities are endless.

I do know one thing for sure though, just looking at them makes me extraordinarily happy.

I submitted my blog  to Ask And Ye Shall Receive for a review, their blog has the url of  iwillfuckingtearyouapart.blogspot.com so you would reasonably expect that you weren’t going to get bouquets when you deserve brickbats.I have been a regular reader of ‘Ask’ for a couple of years now, so I am also well acquainted with how they operate.

What I didn’t expect, was that I would get a reviewer who was unprofessional enough to let his distaste of the bloggies awards colour his review, to the point that he only read the first few pages of my blog.

In the comments he is very quick to point out that there are much better Aussie blogs out there that could have been nominated.Whilst I agree with that sentiment, this review wasn’t supposed to be about my unworthiness as a bloggies finalist. It was supposed to be about my words,which he didn’t actually bother reading.

He is a gushing fan of my daughter, which is as it should be because quite frankly, Veronica is brilliant. The disappointment that my blog wasn’t the same as Veronica’s was almost palpable.

On the strength of a couple page views and roughly half an hour on my blog, I have been dismissed out of hand as nice but boring.

I think it was the accusation of dullness that stung more than anything because it is the first time in my life I have ever been accused of being boring.

So how do I deal with a label of dullness. Well apart from stirring the guts out of my daughter about her ardent admirer from Adelaide. I am going to ignore it.

As I wrote in my about me page I am comfortable in my skin and I don’t feel the need to portray myself as anything other than what I am.

I know who I am and where I am going.

I have shed my skin numerous times. I left all the edgy, angst-filled, woe and the desire to change the world behind me when I was a teen. The dark experimentations and addictions were sloughed off in my twenties. My thirties were a decade of coming to terms with myself, coupled with some very serious drinking. Now in my forties all my various addictions are distant memories and I know that I am on the cusp of a great adventure.

Do I need to tell the stories of out drinking a twenty stone tin miner with more hair on his back than King Kong or doing drugs as a teenager in a public toilet. Will these stories, dredged from my past make my blog edgy and hip? Or do I put those recollections behind me and be thankful that I am alive,that I have made it to 44 with only the loss of my teeth to mark my journey and just write about who I am now?

I think the here and now suits me.

Professor Booty says that I am not his “demitasse of espresso”. Simply by uttering that slice of oh so superior superciliousness, he shows that he isn’t my fucking cup of tea either.