MVenables

The Rat

All words and images © Matthew Venables  2010. All Rights Reserved.

Friday, February 4: 2011

The Rat

This week had cause to make a return to the Dead Animals...a mate asked to use some of the oldies for a forthcoming publication. That gave cause to recall, a coupla months back I'd made this frame but been, for one reason and another unimpressed at the time.

Hadda another look this morning and thought, y'know that ain`t so bad, set to work `developing' the picture. I recall at the time thinking it's a shame you can`t see the face...which of course you can, and seeing that sad kinda peaceful head changed the complexion of the whole picture. Now it had a little somethin' something I liked.

Week Twenty Eight and a Half | The Fox

All words and images © Matthew Venables 2010. All Rights Reserved. Monday, April 26: 2010. The Fox or Roadtrip Roadkill Oh dear, Oh Yes!, I've been remiss...wanting not to have to count that I've slipped a few days am promising myself another snap to be posted within a coupla days...just need to extract it. Been away with the girl this long weekend to Mudgee, takin' the newish car bought from a mate for a song, a convertible no less, we hit the streets top down, hair blown' asunder it's a long weekend outta the big smoke. And hurrah for that we're takin' in the the mass of wine and olives of the local region, having a few days of not too much but driving and tasting. It's a nice drive to Mudgee. Particularly today comin' back back it's fair as far as you can gaze it and cool...winding yer way through the still pretty brown landscape, up and down hill n dale often this road seems to afford quite a vista. Outta Mudgee there's the vine everywhere and then comes cattle and sheep land, presumably other stuff as well as we stopped on route home  and bought some fine looking tomatoes and honey. In Oz theres' no such thing as a road trip without the mown down by car kill, and we saw our share. Numerous foxes, a few rabbits, lizards n roos and an enormous wombat the size of a decent pig. We stopped quite a few times and none of the dead meat quite afforded me what I was hoping for...a couple of the other dead animals I've photographed recently had a sad sorta dignity about them that seems missing from most of the angles I make today, cars whizzing by in the near winter sunshine, this one seems the closest to what I'm looking for. Orright...no more slackness, that 's the motto for the week.

Week Twenty Six | The Bat

All words and images © Matthew Venables 2010. All Rights Reserved. Wednesday, April 7: 2010. The Bat There'd be no truthful way I could say of myself that I'm particularly into dead things, and yet heres' another picture like that, second in a not so very long a while...not meaning anything of the sort I was without camera n heading to the market with my girl, food shopping hi ho hi ho hi ho. Luckily she was holding my old image makn' machine, out to capture for her new food blog (The French Wench, available in English and French, clever lady) when we came across this little fella. Am now halfway through the target of doing an image and some words a week, every and each week for a year. Thoroughly enjoying reaching in n extracting something each occasion, the time has simply flown!...When you're two years old a year is half your life, half the experience. When ten, a tenth of your life...and now, well over the crest of thirty and a bit a year represents less than a thirtieth... and so it is that time accelerates while always there is just so much that we may do! Orright then for now. Until yet another week dribbles, slides or flies away keep things on the upswing knowing that in being alive yer alive to to all these quickenings!

Week Twenty | The Pigeon

All words and images © Matthew Venables 2010. All Rights Reserved. Wednesday, February 24: 2010. The Dead Hospital | Detail #1 : The Pigeon Its just been a week of the the go fasters eh? Amongst the shite heap of my half moved houses and growing mass of most enjoyable commitments found a coupla hours to tour The Dead Hospital with mate n collegue Mr Christopher "Bollywood Beggles" Beghin.  Equipment lashed on backs, cameras to hand, lightweight gas masks in place across snout n cakeholes, our sharpened eyes rove doublequick across the fast deserted hospice. Wandering...most the time halfway to lost, we're amongst the hastily abandoned detritus of medical land, say ten, fifteen years on, the natural and wanton human destruction heightened by the pooled leaks of the last weeks floods, a place of total indiscrimination. Discarded clothes, bottles, photo albums, administrative papers and records with or without clips atop chairs, filing cabinets and the full gamut of beige to grey office goods just occupying  space across four or five different levels of yet another wing in the numerous buildings with fits n rigs and the scientific machinery of twenty years before... where to look? down corridor after corridor, one room along or atop and after another,  this places' a supernatural horror film about set to happen. In one room carpeted by smashed one man troughs n once white cisterns, all paint tears from the walls. In a long hallway sits a lone chair swathed in a mouldering sheet. A large chamber has an orbed silver scanner of some description mounted to a prehensile arm swinging from the ceiling. Two chairs sit at conference underneath amidst the crap on the concrete floor. On a top level with the sun streaming through I slip and just catch balance on a floor caked in now remoistened pigeon slop. Suddenly in their domain they're taking shocked flight all around, thumping, scrabbling into the remaining windows. After a couple of hours the air seems to thicken to the point a halfa coughing fit takes ahold and I splutter my round a corner and evacuate my stomachs' contents, enough for the day and anyway, this place`ll take us some weeks of exploration...After all my blather thought it a nice tease to show but a small detail, pace `the show' with a slow reveal, we're thinking already at some future point of a paired exposition. That's it besides calling for an excellent week for each and every one of us. He he.