David Jones, artist and poet (1895-1974) begins his PREFACE TO THE ANATHEMATA :

'I have made a heap of all that I could find.' (1) So wrote Nennius, or whoever composed the introductory matter to Historia Brittonum. He speaks of an 'inward wound' which was caused by the fear that certain things dear to him 'should be like smoke dissipated'. Further, he says, 'not trusting my own learning, which is none at all, but partly from writings and monuments of the ancient inhabitants of Britain, partly from the annals of the Romans and the chronicles of the sacred fathers, Isidore, Hieronymous, Prosper, Eusebius and from the histories of the Scots and Saxons although our enemies . . . I have lispingly put together this . . . about past transactions, that [this material] might not be trodden under foot'. (2)

(1) The actual words are coacervavi omne quod inveni, and occur in Prologue 2 to the Historia.
(2) Quoted from the translation of Prologue 1. See The Works of Gildas and Nennius, J.A.Giles, London 1841.


02 April 2017

Patrick Pound : The Great Exhibition


Patrick Pound's grandest work so far opens at the National Gallery of Victoria this month. Four thousand of his own collected objects and photographs will be installed amid his selections from the gallery's collection. Hubristically titled The Great Exhibition, it's Pound's version of a world expo.

"It's a mad folly," he says, erupting with laughter. 



Pairs (and the double), 2016−2017 (detail)    
  

"It's another version of the world," he says. "A tragic comedy of the world through things. It's a bit like Balzac's Human Comedy – that vast novel cycle that had all of Paris in it. The whole world can be pulled into this one constraint so that it can have things about race and class and gender, and history, and culture, and the everyday life and death, and fun and daftness or serious implications, but they are all drawn in by one thing. And it makes us look at what they are differently.


The photographer's shadow, 2000-2017 (detail)    

"It's collage meets a car-boot sale," he says, before bursting into laughter.

Patrick Pound's The Great Exhibition is at NGV Australia, Federation Square, March 31-July 30. Patrick Pound In Conversation, April 1, at 2pm.

- Extracts above are from From eBay to the NGV: Patrick Pound's 'mad folly' makes art of our cast-offs by Ray Edgar in the week-end AGE/SMH.    

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