As I write to you I am snuggled up in bed with a piping hot beverage contemplating when and whether or not to go into work today. Work today is in Abbotsford Convent, in Melbourne and although I consider myself acclimated, that does not stop me from bemoaning the temperature difference. Nor does it stop me from using it as an excuse to stay under the bed covers.
I am working with my cousin Tania Hunt, and we are sharing an Airbnb apartment. A one bedroom Airbnb apartment. Making a magnanimous gesture, I offered to stay on the couch until, like Goldilocks trying to catch forty winks on the first of the three little bears’ beds, my cousin was swallowed whole into the folds of the mattress. So now I am relegated to the bed with the dodgy memory foam in its final throes of dementia.
The hero of this blog is Abbotsford Convent where the Platform residency is housed and culminating this coming Friday the 16th of August, after a two-week creative development period. The Platform initiative is a partnership between the Convent and Blakdance. It is billed as an intergenerational project. I guess I am the intergenerational component in the equation as the other two artists chosen to take part are Joel Bray and Carly Sheppard, both very much younger however with considerable experience, reputations and followings in their own right. Which is more than I can say about myself. I assume people follow me like they do old Volkswagen Beetles, amazed there are still some left on the road. No matter.
Yet again I digress.
This blog was going to be about the place that spawns creativity from every heavy piece of architecture. As we, my cousin and I, walk through the gates directly opposite a medium sized car park adjacent to the fast yet surprisingly quiet current of the Yarra River we are greeted by the first of many gathering places, which houses a cafe, a bakery and if you look to your right, in the not so distant distance, a beauty of a cherry blossom in full bloom nestled in one of the many gardens.
Perusing the web I discovered that the Abbotsford Convent has its own Wikipedia page and that it was transformed into an orphanage come workhouse when “in 1863, ‘four Irish sisters from the Good Shepherd’s mother house in Angers, France’ bought the ‘two large 1840s villa estates, St Heliers and Abbotsford House’ to establish their Order.”
Apparently the living conditions at the Convent were considered at one point to be draconian. Walking through the many arts spaces we were to be working in on our first day of the ensuing weeks certainly attested to a macabre interplay of good will and for want of a better word, slavish conditions. Everything hints at a scale that accommodated hundreds of bodies working to launder for the thousands.
Comparatively, as a young aspiring artist I briefly squatted, along with thirty four other artists, in an old naval gunnery in Woolloomooloo, in Sydney. While we were there a few of the older residents banded together and invited some members of what is now known as Create NSW to pitch an idea to transform the Gunnery into an arts space. Like the Convent, the Gunnery now accommodates a turnover of resident artists, alas unlike the Convent which has kept many of the fixtures alluding to its past, the majority of the Gunnery’s walls have been whitewashed to resemble a contemporary, more specifically, a generic white box, with many little clean white boxes nestled inside of it. The Gunnery is literally a mere shell of its former self with scant indication of the former artillery machinations which originally took place in evidence. I can’t help but feel this is an egregious mistake.
The Abbotsford Convent’s brutalist interiors remind me of the subject matter I am dealing with in my creative development, of lateral violence and passive aggression. More specifically the mix of good intent meeting harsh reality. The sweeping of something under the rug, or hidden behind closed doors and high fences (the latter of which my cousin pointed out to me were well over three metres in height). However, the surrealist juxtapositioning of dancing bodies in the heavy mortared enclosures also perfectly lends itself to my predilection for inserting seemingly unrelated humour.
Upon entering the second week of my residency I have not yet tackled the really heavy hitting moments this work needs to address the chosen theme. I have not taken us to the dark places this compound could so easily conjure and perhaps that’s OK. Perhaps it’s OK to keep throwing frivolous ideas to the wall to see how and if they stick first, continue to skirt the issue so to speak and trust that it will eventually all come out in the wash. All puns intended.
Yesterday (Saturday) my cousin and I went in to tie up some loose ends before she went back home. It has been a challenge and a joy to work with someone who has natural instincts without any of the pretence too much training can imbue a performer. Next to her (Tania Hunt), I recognised the hamm in myself that I can only put down to the deficit in my work life balance. In that respect and many more Tania is the ideal collaborator. Oh and she is funny as heck so you’re going to watch out as I think she is destined for a life change in stand-up comedy. It’s almost inevitable and that is why I got her on board. One week is simply not enough.
Nor is two weeks enough time to make a considerable amount of creative content for that matter. A good work needs time and operates independently of, while also dependent upon, the fast-paced high-turnover ready-to-wear economically driven era we currently inhabit. That does not negate my gratitude for this fabulous opportunity. It just means that in the next few days I have to get a wriggle on.
Until next month.
Vicki Van Hout
FORM Dance Projects
Blogger in Residence