Estranged
[2007-12-11]

animation: Lisa Roberts
Sydney 2007

words: Jack Ward
Mawson 1955

drawings:
Meredith Lucy
John Smith
Rena Czaplinska,
Yoris Everaerts,
Lisa Roberts

Sydney, 2007

sound: Jon Hizzard
Flinders Island 2003

You feel the word
lives for the first time
estranged
as soon as it is spoken.

Jack Ward, Mawson, January 1955

Artists took turns
to read the words from Ward's Mawson diary,
and then to move and draw,
in response.

Drawings (from top):
Meredith Lucy, John Smith,
Rena Czaplinska.
Sydney, October 2007

My aim in animating

is to connect people

with Antarctic landscapes

and the changes happening within them.

As I progress, I can see a dance,

a chorus of human responses.

Animating drawings

by six different artists

I connect their with different reponses.

Their drawings connect with each other

through moving gestures and sound.

Responding to Antarctic words,

their breathing became deep.

Through breath they pushed down

and then reached right out.
They stretched and then released.

The motion suggested connections

within and beyond the body.

Working on the transitions

between the different drawings,

I found the image of a spine

to link the within and beyond.

It felt like I made the connection

I had seen in the dancing forms.

Jon Hizzard's music

combines Antarctic recordings

with sounds from where he lives.

His music connects Antarctica

with an Australian landscape.

Yoris Everaerts, Rena Czaplinska and Christine McMillan respond to the same text some time later. College of Fine Arts, Sydney. July 2008

wispy

ghostly

eery

emerging

windy

visual sonic manifestation

making

thinking objects

moving through a landscape

The animation evokes a human(?)

presence rising out of the ice of antarctica

but the figure is transformed

into a primordial anthopomorphic wind creature

giving birth to icicles, wind and other objects.

The sound echoes what is happening in the animation

and adds to that etheriality

(is there such a word?)

of the experience.

I think the animation achieves a represenation

of the etherial nature

of the weather on antartica,

one minute calm the next alll hell breaks loose.

Peter Charuk
Sydney, 9 July 2008

Acting on the assumption that the subject

is to do with Antarctica,

the animation reminds me

that Antarctica is made up largely

of flowing iice, air and water.

BUT I believe that the description of a subject in art

should have a great deal of intrinsic value

which springs from the artist's own vision/thinking.

I have great touble in my classes

trying to make some of them realise

that they should interpret rather than copy.

SO I sat running your animation

through and through many times and,

apart from the music which I found a bit distracting,

I found it a mesmerising expereience in its own right,

as well as telling me something

of your personal Antarctica.

Sensuous, I think is a good word

with maybe a touch of sensuality as well.

Fred Elliott
Melbourne, 7 July 2008