I posted about writing some poems for my sister's exhibition a couple of months ago and I thought you might like to know that the exhibition is currently on show in the Manning gallery in NSW
The paintings are spectacular, luminous and mysterious and I am in awe of Laura's achievement.
I only wish I could see them in the flesh.
Am I embarrassed by my poems? A little. They are journeymen work and I am very aware of it. The exhibition called 'Flux' is about 'moments of transition, often uncomfortable moments between states and worlds. The recurrent motif of the waterfall, symbolising in its perpetual motion life and renewal, is juxtaposed with human figures, finite, and vulnerable. The narrative nature of these works hints at our fragile relationship with the natural world, with which we are often at odds.'
Ekphrastic poems are difficult things and I suppose what I was trying to avoid was any description of the work on the basis that you don't tell and show: words don't do the same work as images. I did break that rule once for one work because I love the way the vertical brushstrokes are stripes of colour and a hidden person in a way that lets the viewer in on the secret of painting that is both textured surface and visual illusion: She who may not be there:
It is not a particularly successful poem and my crit group were not enormously keen on it, but it is the only poem that in any way comments directly on the work so I included it.
All the remaining poems took the wonderful atmospheric ambiguity of Laura's image and told a story, a kind of backstory to the moment of the painting. It was a reductionist approach.
In the the main the poems are formal: sonnets and villanelles and sestenas partly because they are easier and quicker for me to write than free forms and partly because they give the viewer something to kick against. The poems are inspired by the paintings but don't reflect them: a woman in the water becomes a modern anti Ophelia, a man catching a train becomes everyman and no one running from and running to another life, a suspended underwater figure becomes a housewife diving into a pool after a long day and this brillianlty ambiguous image becomes a sliding doors kind of poem.
The poems are short narratives, responses to the work that I rather hope the viewer will reject in favour of their own.
I can't honestly say whether they add anything to an astounding exhibition, but it has been a great project. We have produced post cards with image and poem together and are considering a book. It is a little bit complicated as we are on opposite sides of the world, but I'm sure we can work something out.
Meanwhile you can see them on instagram @lauramatthewsfineart
Comments
The waterfall, about life and renewal. I liked that, both the painting and the poem. The waterfall is frozen in time by the artist. Mari mentioned 'liminal' in her blog so it was my current 'word', that in-between state that is so productive. Now it is 'Ekphrastic', I had to look that up, then I thought of that favourite one of mine by Auden about Icarus falling into the sea. You have good company. The woman by the river and your poem, contrasting the man who sometimes lies and sometimes tells the truth, made me think that there may be some background we need to know, but then - it's just a woman trailing a stick in the water as one does.
Thanks for the post
I too had to look up 'Ekphrastic'