His future lay unbound….Although inspired by the Super Hero of ancient times, Robin Hood, Robin Small is not the crusading sort, he’s more of an outsider who is simply heroic in his own time. He is apprehensive within the modern world, yet stands firmly in his vulnerability. He is wise and brave in his own life and journey – and the steps he takes towards a future of his own making.
This is me being sad.
Maybe you think I’m happy in this picture.
Really I’m sad but pretending I’m happy.
I’m doing this because I think people won’t like me if I look sad.
Sometimes I want to talk about all this to someone.
Like my mum. But she’s not here anymore, either. So I can’t.
I find someone else. And I tell them all about it.
To coincide with the opening of the Fremantle Art Centre Print Award, Thursday 13th September at 6.30pm, I’ll be doing an installation in the glass cabinet outside FOUND gift store at FAC. Books and dry-point prints will be available in FOUND and the new book, ‘Wisdoms of Rose’. Pop down on Saturday afternoon the 15th at 1pm and join me for a relaxed Artist Talk about how the collection evolved through underground publishing ethos of The Black Dog Project and the creative process of making both the handmade and published books.
The typewriter Clunk & Jam book was typed on. Also pictured, dry point prints printed on the Fremantle Art Centre old printing press. Handmade and published books.
“Life is mostly froth and bubble. Two things stand like stone. Kindness in another’s trouble – courage in your own.” Barbara Dinham’s Father. She writes … “The mature conscience of the postwar generation globally dropped do-gooding in favour of analysis and insight into social and political structures that maintain inequality and general injustice. Kindness did not fit into analysis. Being kind was for animals, children, the elderly, yourself even, and maybe the environment. Kindness was too banal for the big social issues. Kindness was for private, personal actions. Yet one of the major social movements of the second half of the 20th century fought fiercely for recognition that the personal is political. So is it time for a new kind of kindness?”
(Barbara Dinham, Director, Pesticide Action Network, UK. Pic and story from book ‘A Revolution In Kindness’ edited by the late Anita Roddick (Body Shop. Reposted from 2010).
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
Footnote: The poem ‘Invictus’ was written in 1875 by William Ernest Henley, an English Poet, who had one of his legs amputated at the age of 17. The poem, which he wrote while healing from the amputation, is a testimony to his refusal to let his handicap disrupt his life. ‘Invictus’ is Latin for unconquered. Undefeated. It was the anthem used for the Invictus Games this year.
