When I first heard I was coming to Houston, there were two places I felt I really had to visit, alongside all the operatic goings-on. One was the Space Centre (which should happen on Wednesday) - the other was the Rothko Chapel. I'd known about this space for years - ever since I first started researching Rothko as a visual inspiration for The Great God Brown in (I think) 1993. He then became a major source for one of the early Border Crossings shows - the multi-media devised piece I did as a solo show, Departures / Arrivals. In that production, I played Rothko on film (though I look nothing like him!), as well as a version of myself on stage. We used imagery from his work and quotations from his letters in the form of projected text. His incredible use of emptiness to portray so much of the contemporary human condition carries on being a huge influence on me. The stage spaces for the Trilogy, and even for pieces like Bullie's House, Mappa Mundi and Double Tongue, all owe something to this aesthetic - and, more importantly, to its underlying spiritual power.
The Chapel is in an area of Houston which was bought by an incredibly wealthy philanthropic couple called the Menils, who collected art from all over the world, including an amazing selection of Greek vases and a vast array of Magrittes. Their collection is now on free display in an ever-changing exhibition space, which currently features a whole series of very funny, and very disturbing interventions by the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan (he's the one who did the Pope being struck by a meteorite). The presence of this iconoclast is another tribute to the open-mindedness of the Menils, who were, after all, devout Catholics - they also endowed St. Thomas's University in this same area of Houston, which appears to teach everything within a Thomist framework.
The Rothko Chapel, however, is not Catholic. In fact, it isn't even Christian. It is visited and used by Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Taoists, Hindus... you name it. It is a space of contemplation, meditation, and spirituality in the widest sense. What you do there may or may not involve a deity. To my mind, Rothko's paintings are about the spiritual meaning of the deity's absence (or apparent absence), in the contemporary world. They seem to work like icons - providing a bridge into another reality - but that reality is empty. His fourteen vast canvases, nine of which form three triptychs, are open shimmering spaces of black, dark reds and deep purples. They are not about "glory" or "redemption" or "consolation". They are about our need to face up to emptiness, and to find a relationship with that vast void which envelopes our existence.
I went twice during the day. The first time there were quite a lot of people there: including one who was trying to take photos and set the attendant scurrying towards him. The second time, after I'd been to the Menil Collection, I was able to sit there on my own with the paintings. It was totally silent, apart from the attendant occasionally turning the page of her newspaper. The silence was like a noise. And the emptiness of the paintings was like a fullness - shimmering and numinous, overpowering with the presence of absence.
Outside, there is a pool, with a broken obelisk by Barnett Newman. It's set in a little garden. The sun was very hot, and the birds were singing.
Showing posts with label bullies house. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bullies house. Show all posts
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Thomas Keneally shipwrecked
Tom was on Desert Island Discs this morning. I got used to his voice through a saga of phone-calls in the build-up to getting Bullie's House on: nice to hear him again. By a funny coincidence, today I also finished reading his novel A Family Madness, which is a journey into deeply disturbing material across two parallel narratives - one in contemporary Australia, the other around the Belorussian involvement in World War Two. This is characteristic of Tom, and one of the things which drew me to his work in the first place: he's very much aware of the interdependence of seemingly discreet spheres of operation - the way in which global history affects each and every life, however parochial it may seem to others, and indeed to itself. Bullie's House was set on a remote mission station - and was about the great spiritual and political questions of our time. At one point in the BBC interview, Tom says: "The best stories happen on the fault lines between races and cultures". That could be the motto of Border Crossings.
Saturday, June 09, 2007
Broome and Perth
A tropical evening in Broome, and Uncle Baamba rolls up at the Mangrove Hotel to take me out. My one night here happens to coincide with the opening of an exhibition commemorating 100 years of the presence in the Kimberley of the Sisters of St. John of God. In 1907, a handful of Irish nuns, with no knowledge of Aboriginal people, appeared in the north of Western Australia, fuelled by nothing but missionary zeal and charity. Although they now wear simple modern clothes, and for some time wore white cotton habits, the first nuns were clad in heavy black wool from head to toe, with a train for good measure. Given that it’s 35C today, and this is the winter, they must have been stifled. “No wonder they were a bit grumpy”, says Baamba.
When we were doing Bullie’s House, it was very apparent that Baamba knew a lot about mission stations, priests and anthropologists. Now it’s clear why – he went to school on one. He shows me pictures of his mother as a novice nun (who never took her final vows!), himself as a boy in the dilapidated school-house; he introduces me to his numerous cousins, nephews and nieces, and his “favourite teacher”, who is an ageing nun. I’m always wary of evangelism in any form – but there is something very touching about this community and its place in this region. Not least the fact that, if indigenous people had not come here, they would have been massacred in the bush. Michelle tells me that Aboriginal people were being hunted for sport as recently as the 1970s; and that there was a conspiracy of silence to protect the perpetrators.
It takes us a while to find a restaurant which is still open at the late hour of 8.30pm, but finally get a Chow Mein in the local Chinese. It’s BYO (bring your own), so we drink water with it. There are lots of Chinese people here, as well as Malay and Japanese. Broome was exempt from the white Australia policy, as a step to encourage Asian people here to man the pearl luggers. Hence the incredible mix of races. Dalisa is part Aboriginal and part Malay. Jimmy Chi, the playwright and musician, is Aboriginal, Japanese, Chinese and Scottish – one quarter to each grandparent. Baamba had a Japanese step-father, and used to be allowed into the pubs when other Aboriginals were not, because the Japanese were regarded as closer to white. “Besides”, he chortles, “they had to let me in, ‘cos nobody else could play ‘em any music”.
We trundle across the road to the Roebuck Tavern, made famous by Jimmy Chi in Bran Nue Dae – the Aboriginal musical with its roots in Broome, in which Baamba played Uncle Tadpole; a character I suspect was modelled rather closely on himself. Sadly, the cliché of the alcoholic Aboriginal is much in evidence here. As we sit on the veranda, waiting for a taxi, they lurch and stagger around us. It doesn’t feel dangerous or threatening – just rather pathetic. And horribly understandable. There are people in this state whose first contact with the wider world was only a few decades ago. Now, even in this incredibly remote little town (two and a half hours’ flight from Perth, which is itself the world’s most remote big city), there are numerous cars, internet cafés, cinemas, tourists, and flashing corporate logos. And alcohol. It’s hardly surprising that people should have such a deep sense of displacement.
And yet, there is so much here that is positive in the community’s development and efforts towards sustainability. Baamba’s own work at Goolarri and in education (he’s one of the founders of Notre Dame University here) is extraordinary. Michelle takes me to Magabala Books – an independent Indigenous publisher. We browse through galleries of traditional art, wondering at the throbbing, shimmering vitality of these Dreaming-inspired paintings. And, of course, there was Bran Nue Dae. At the airport, I spot a CD of the music, which I have never heard – and snap it up.
Back in Perth for one evening, which I spend with Heath Bergersen, who played Bullie himself, and Bev Webb, his adopted mother, agent, and our Australian Associate Producer on the project. Both Heath and Baamba have the most incredible memories, and remind me of things which happened during that 2004 tour which I’d long since consigned to my internal recycle bin. There’s much laughter, and a little sadness over the death of Kevin Costello. It does us good to talk about him. I’d been a bit wary, because I know some indigenous Australians resist talking about the dead – but both Baamba and Heath initiate the subject with the generosity born from a shared loss.
Up early, and dash round to the Post Office, to collect a parcel of material from Bain Stewart, who is Leah Purcell’s partner and manager at Bungabura Productions. And now here I am on yet another plane, this time to Brisbane. I should be meeting Leah and Bain on Tuesday. In the meantime, I’m off to the Festival of the Dreaming.
When we were doing Bullie’s House, it was very apparent that Baamba knew a lot about mission stations, priests and anthropologists. Now it’s clear why – he went to school on one. He shows me pictures of his mother as a novice nun (who never took her final vows!), himself as a boy in the dilapidated school-house; he introduces me to his numerous cousins, nephews and nieces, and his “favourite teacher”, who is an ageing nun. I’m always wary of evangelism in any form – but there is something very touching about this community and its place in this region. Not least the fact that, if indigenous people had not come here, they would have been massacred in the bush. Michelle tells me that Aboriginal people were being hunted for sport as recently as the 1970s; and that there was a conspiracy of silence to protect the perpetrators.
It takes us a while to find a restaurant which is still open at the late hour of 8.30pm, but finally get a Chow Mein in the local Chinese. It’s BYO (bring your own), so we drink water with it. There are lots of Chinese people here, as well as Malay and Japanese. Broome was exempt from the white Australia policy, as a step to encourage Asian people here to man the pearl luggers. Hence the incredible mix of races. Dalisa is part Aboriginal and part Malay. Jimmy Chi, the playwright and musician, is Aboriginal, Japanese, Chinese and Scottish – one quarter to each grandparent. Baamba had a Japanese step-father, and used to be allowed into the pubs when other Aboriginals were not, because the Japanese were regarded as closer to white. “Besides”, he chortles, “they had to let me in, ‘cos nobody else could play ‘em any music”.
We trundle across the road to the Roebuck Tavern, made famous by Jimmy Chi in Bran Nue Dae – the Aboriginal musical with its roots in Broome, in which Baamba played Uncle Tadpole; a character I suspect was modelled rather closely on himself. Sadly, the cliché of the alcoholic Aboriginal is much in evidence here. As we sit on the veranda, waiting for a taxi, they lurch and stagger around us. It doesn’t feel dangerous or threatening – just rather pathetic. And horribly understandable. There are people in this state whose first contact with the wider world was only a few decades ago. Now, even in this incredibly remote little town (two and a half hours’ flight from Perth, which is itself the world’s most remote big city), there are numerous cars, internet cafés, cinemas, tourists, and flashing corporate logos. And alcohol. It’s hardly surprising that people should have such a deep sense of displacement.
And yet, there is so much here that is positive in the community’s development and efforts towards sustainability. Baamba’s own work at Goolarri and in education (he’s one of the founders of Notre Dame University here) is extraordinary. Michelle takes me to Magabala Books – an independent Indigenous publisher. We browse through galleries of traditional art, wondering at the throbbing, shimmering vitality of these Dreaming-inspired paintings. And, of course, there was Bran Nue Dae. At the airport, I spot a CD of the music, which I have never heard – and snap it up.
Back in Perth for one evening, which I spend with Heath Bergersen, who played Bullie himself, and Bev Webb, his adopted mother, agent, and our Australian Associate Producer on the project. Both Heath and Baamba have the most incredible memories, and remind me of things which happened during that 2004 tour which I’d long since consigned to my internal recycle bin. There’s much laughter, and a little sadness over the death of Kevin Costello. It does us good to talk about him. I’d been a bit wary, because I know some indigenous Australians resist talking about the dead – but both Baamba and Heath initiate the subject with the generosity born from a shared loss.
Up early, and dash round to the Post Office, to collect a parcel of material from Bain Stewart, who is Leah Purcell’s partner and manager at Bungabura Productions. And now here I am on yet another plane, this time to Brisbane. I should be meeting Leah and Bain on Tuesday. In the meantime, I’m off to the Festival of the Dreaming.
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