'Last Things' in Exhibition and Book Launch at ANU School of Art, Canberra May 4-9th

LAST THINGS:

An exhibition of photographic images and writings by Ruth Skilbeck 
In Intertwined: Exhibiting Mother Artists, ANU School of Art, May 4-9, 2015
Author talk and book launch of Australian Fugue: The Antipode Room, 4-5pm May 9

The talk and exhibition opening were televised for  Sydney "Coffee Break" CommunityTV show, producer Jan Wood

The exhibition was of nine photographic images from the Last Things series with an essay.

Wall Essay:

First Things: Reflections on Single-lens Reflex Digital Photography with a Wide-angle Lens
by Ruth Skilbeck
Published in The International Journal of the Image, Vol. 3, 2013

This reflective practice essay discusses the psychology of perception and the proposition of processing trauma and loss through digital photography focusing on “Last Things” series of photographic images by the author. The paper reflexively explores the proposition of Art making as means of processing Traumatic experience, of loss, and shock of the unknown, in this case literally as well as symbolically, in images that go beyond words. The room was “empty” but needed clearing of the last things. She entered her mother’s death chamber with camera held to her face as shield and mask and took photographs of objects that she found there. The author learned from her own response, that she turned to the visual, to images, before words; she used her digital single-lens reflex camera, with wide-angle lens. This experience shifted her focus as arts journalist, to reflectively writing of her own perceptions and response, and the images made in that passing moment. Here she also refers to other artists and critics including urban Aboriginal artists, Mary Kelly, Barthes in his "Camera Lucida" and to further published exhibited works she has made.

And:

Blue Fugue, 2013  (Book cover image)

Australian Fugue: The Antipode Room, Newcastle: PostMistress Press, 2015. 

Exhibition: Intertwined: Exhibiting Mother Artists

Curated by Ruth Skilbeck, Vee Malnar and Joan Garvan 

with Book Launch of Australian Fugue: The Antipode Room a novel by Ruth Skilbeck

Exhibition: ANU School of Art Monday 4 May- Saturday 9 May.

Author Talk and Book Launch: 4-5 Saturday 9 May 2015  

New Trends in Literary Publishing- Author-Publishing in Australia

The purpose of this project is to make a limited edition special collectors edition of the novel The Antipode Room, which will be published on December 1, 2013. The aim is to make a limited edition eBook, and signed print book to commemorate the launch. This will also be the first book publication of its kind in Australia, hence the occasion for a commemorative edition.

The book began life in an MA and PhD in creative writing and literature and has since evolved into its own form. This is the first author-publisher new literary publication, to use eBook and printed book format in Australia, which aims to show other authors that this is a viable way of reaching new audiences and readers.

Synopsis:

Interweaving loss of self-awareness coupled with a strange excursion or journey, The Antipode Room, is a fugue narrative, telling of Ruby’s flight to Australia and her past lost life, it voices the main characters’ inner thoughts of: Ruby, Hugo, Ray and Margarita. She ends up on a murder charge in an Australian jail.

Innocents are often condemned, scapegoated, for crimes they did not commit, but is this the case with Ruby? Imprisoned in Australian jail she writes to remember what happened on that "fateful fatal afternoon" when her best friend violinist, Margy, was murdered. The Antipode Room is based in London, Sydney, Newcastle, forest in northern New South Wales, the underground opal town Cooper Peedy and the desert. The main character "Countess Ruby Rivers" emerged in London from an amnesiac fugue, forgetting her past, she reinvents her self-identity and her past. Her life is transformed when she meets the infamous conservative phenomenologist and professor, Hugo, who gives her Ruby Love, a contemporary art gallery in inner London. The Antipode Room is a point of departure, the space of the art gallery, it tells the story of their one-way trip to Australia on a mission to collect Australian artists for Ruby Love.

A chance meeting in a Sydney art galley, at the opening of the NEW REPUBLIC exhibition brings Ruby into dangerously close proximity to the leader of art-activists, Art Criminals, who had a mysteriously profound influence in another life; she has not been able to forget his words, and her lost self rushes back. Forgetting Hugo, she disappears with Ray.

I think you might lose yourself gazing into mesmerizing sclerophyll forests in northern New South Wales.

    Another day I might feel inclined at the low ebb before lunch, to go into my office and lock the door. Browse through my private collection; fall into images of beauty, irresistibly seductive objects of desire. Objects. I can hold within my gaze. I can own and possess in a way that’s impossible to ever possess a real lover. Make mine forever. (The Antipode Room)

The Antipode Room is 75,000 words, a medium length novel of approx. 240 pages to be published as an eBook, and printed book, with photographs.






The cover image is a new photographic work:


Blue Fugue, digital photographic montage, Ruth Skilbeck (2013)



E-Book and printed book.

Toronto MIRCI conference, and Mamapalooza Sydney 2012

From Sydney to Toronto, 2012 Mother's Day week is turning out to be a busy time of multiple 'synergies' for the new Motherhood arts movement around the world..

I am flying to Toronto to present my research project 'Remembering Australia's Forgotten Mothers: Identity and Colonial History' at the MIRCI international conference Mothers and History: Histories of Motherhood, hosted by the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement, York University on the 10-12th May. My trip is generously supported by the Journalism and Media Research Centre at the University of New South Wales, where I am a Lecturer.

At the same time the Mamapalooza Sydney festival that I have been involved in for the past few months,  runs from 8-13th May. I will be there in spirit and with images from my photographic series, Last Things, in the exhibition. 

Festival coordinator and film-maker Vee Malnar has suggested filming a video-talk of my presentation  to show at Mamapalooza Sydney during the festival; if not quite as good as teleportation nonetheless this would seem not a bad way of being in two places at once- a feat I often dreamt of as a busy working mother .

                                  

 

                  ©Ruth Skilbeck. Armchair Illumination, from Last Things 2008-2012. Digital photograph.

Toronto MIRCI conference, and Mamapalooza Sydney 2012

From Sydney to Toronto, 2012 Mother's Day week is turning out to be a busy time of multiple 'synergies' for the new Motherhood arts movement around the world..

I am flying to Toronto to present my research project 'Remembering Australia's Forgotten Mothers: Identity and Colonial History' at the MIRCI international conference Mothers and History: Histories of Motherhood, hosted by the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement, York University on the 10-12th May. My trip is generously supported by the Journalism and Media Research Centre at the University of New South Wales, where I am a Lecturer.

At the same time the Mamapalooza Sydney festival that I have been involved in for the past few months,  runs from 8-13th May. I will be there in spirit and with images from my photographic series, Last Things, in the exhibition. 

Festival coordinator and film-maker Vee Malnar has suggested filming a video-talk of my presentation  to show at Mamapalooza Sydney during the festival; if not quite as good as teleportation nonetheless this would seem not a bad way of being in two places at once- a feat I often dreamt of as a busy working mother .

                                  

 

                  ©Ruth Skilbeck. Armchair Illumination, from Last Things 2008-2012. Digital photograph.