Music of insects & the open road

Mine eyes stung for a second while I adjusted from the blackness to see a driver’s silhouette appear on the hot horizon. On watching this film, I remembered long road trips to visit our grandparents as kids from Sydney to Temora, in rural NSW.
You can watch it here... X

This post is in recognition of my friend in Oz, artist Angelica Mesiti. Her video work is called “The line of Lode, and the Death of Charlie Day” & tells a story of what she calls “confused histories”.


Turns out Charlie Day is the misnomer for an aboriginal artist by the name of ‘Gordon Waye’… who painted outback vistas on interior walls of a Broken Hill hotel, but in a colonial way. So not only is his name misplaced, but the dreamtime tradition of representation too. These are captured in the film, along with the eerie presence of a goat on the stairwell. This mural was decorated during the boom time brought by the mining era, the dirt mound left behind known as 'the line of lode'.


When the open road leads into town & the hum of gravel subsides, the slow steady panning from the car window traces mans attempt to tame the outback, hinting at how remote these area’s are, and it’s the heat makes you want to drive slow… while you watch the fence move past like a snake.


The images keep coming of man’s dusty trappings of the wild things which once flew the sky, now put on the wall like trophies. A little theatricality sneaks in with elaborate winged costumes worn by the suburban bike bandit kids at the end circling like birds... their metallic triangular feathers reflecting back the sunset.


Makes me wanna go bush!

To see her most recent work, Gallery 9 presents 'Natural History'
...an exhibition by Angelica Mesiti...
Opening Saturday 15th May 6 - 8pm
Exhibition: 12th - 29th May

if in on that side of the world, pop in and say I sent you.

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