Marking Time: Drawing change
Slowly wheeling, like rays of a search light, the days, the weeks, the years passed one after another across the sky.
VIRGINIA WOOLF in ‘The Years’
Inner City Seasons
Applebee 2021 (Seasons), Animated drawing, 2 minutes, 2021
In 2021 I drew the passage of daylight in my street for the 24 hours from 10.00 PM to 10.00 PM over 3 days, one in the middle of Winter, one in Spring and one at the height of Summer. I saw the garbos collect the rubbish, strangers take away doors and night animals slink around in the dark. It was the time of lockdowns when neighbours stayed at home and watched those subtle changes that were close at hand in a way that we had never paid so much attention to before.
Winter
The Winter Solstice 2021 I found a big old comfy chair out the front of my studio. I sat there all day and drew the day as it passed. This was close to the start of our second lockdown in Sydney and the street was cold and quiet. I started off looking North, with the plan to turn 90 degrees every season.
Spring
Another 24 hours at the spring equinox; Garbage night.
Summer
Christmas time and summer as I look South down my street for another 24 hours of drawing.
Garden 2021
Applebee Development
In June 2018 developers started to pull down the little house that I could see from my balcony. I have been drawing the changing landscape of my street each week since then. Once they have finished I will animate the ‘progress’.
Applebee Development, ongoing project.
A Year of Tree
From the 27th June 2018 and the 26th June 2019, I took weekly Polaroids of a tree near where I work . By recording the changes of this tree over the space of a year, this work aims to encapsulate a sense of endurance in that change. It is presented as both an animated sequence of original Polaroids and a printed spatial layering of those times
The Last Breath
I drew my beautiful mother each of her last 40 days. These drawings have been made into an animation..
Ruby Gap
In 2009 I was at Ruby Gap in the MacDonald ranges. I sat on a hill from sunrise till sunset, recording the changing light as the day passed.
Time cannot vanish without trace for it is a subjective spiritual category; and the time we have lived settles in our soul as an experience placed within time.
ANDREY TARKOVSKY
It is the time right now expressed.
SHINSHU ROBERTS in ‘Being-Time’
Maryanne Coutts 