EXHIBITION DATES:Saturday, 31 October 2009 - Sunday, 8 November 2009
OPENING:6pm Friday 30 October
A performance installation by Martha McDonald
American performance artist Martha McDonald brings her unique blend of folksong, historic narrative, personal confessional and obsessive handcrafts to Linden - Centre for Contemporary Arts.
In seven exclusive performances McDonald will fill Linden's exhibition spaces with an excess of hand knitted memento mori, riffing off the domestic crafts Victorian women made while sequestered in their homes, bound by the elaborate rituals of 19th century mourning culture.She will guide intimate groups of audience members on a personal journey through her installation: singing Old Time American folk laments about lost loves and longing for home; knitting and unraveling love tokens for the audience; and musing on the slippery nature of memory and her own longing and nostalgia for home as a recent immigrant to Australia.
Performances
Audiences limited, bookings are essential. For enquiries please phone 9209 6794
Showing in the Linden Reading Room:
Aphids Care Instructions is a video installation centred on the porthole of an old tumble-dryer.
Director Margaret Cameron Writer Cynthia Troup Performers Jane Bayly, Liz Jones & Caroline Lee Music David Young Lighting Danny Pettingill Video Eugene Schlusser Photography Yatze
Care Instructions is a video installation centred on the porthole of an old tumble-dryer. Care Instructions: who remembers the thirteenth godmother from Sleeping Beauty, the uninvited guest by whose curse the princess fell asleep for a hundred years? Now, apparently, she washes, waiting for her chance to 'make another better wish', when, finally, the royal child awakens. This washer-woman - perhaps a nineteenth-century maidservant trapped in the machine; perhaps the troubled foremother who haunts a modern-day laundry - is caught in a baleful yet comic and deeply melodious whirl of words.
Featuring actor Liz Jones, as well as compelling photography by Yatzek, the Care Instructions video installation is based on the theatre work of the same name written by Cynthia Troup and directed by Margaret Cameron, which was first performed at La Mama in November 2008, and seen in a second Melbourne season at the Malthouse Tower Theatre in July 2009.
Please note: Gallery opening hours will be restricted during this exhibition to 3-5 Thursday-Friday; 11-1 & 3-5 Saturday & Sunday
