Settlement and fragments

On Wednesday I was taken to a marvellous exhibition at the QUT gallery that is really worth a wander through should you work near there or be in the general vicinity. It is by a Phillipino husband and wife team, Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan and was made with many collaborators including their five children and various community groups.
This show,"Fragments- Another Country",  has it all, my people. There is crochet, vintage everything, handmade objects, recycling, clutter and culling and a great deal of thought provoking loveliness.
It is about the ordeal of relocation and  immigration and what we humans think is important enough that we would keep in our  lives should we have to choose.

One room was filled with walls of intricately made aeroplanes all made using recycled and found objects like the rest f the exhibition.

The boys I went with were most taken with this lairy modded bus/car.

 These cupboards are made from a rare kind of oak only found in Queensland but packed with every imaginable bit of ephemera from the owners' past lives in the Phillipines. One boy pointed out a Sarah Vaughan CD. I was impressed that a fourteen year old even new who Sarah Vaughan was!

Then there was a colossal sculpture reminiscent of a ship or the barricade from Les Mis.

It filled an entire room with struts and sails made of crocheted rugs and vintage knitting needles. Yes! Vintage knitting needles! I was in Heaven, I tell you.

Then there were wonderful assemblages made of old cardboard and twigs. Pull yer socks up there, boys!

At the end we got to make our own special objet that we would choose to keep should we have to give up everything and leave our homes. The boys labelled them with names and where they were from and reasons why that was their chosen item. The twinettes were, as usual, chalk and cheese. One wanted to take his bed so that he could always have a comfortable night's sleep. The other made an abstract lucky charm molecule thing to bring luck in his new home. I made a ring to symbolize my family, because like most of us, that's what I value most.

Then we mailed them on a huge pile of treasures made by all the other visitors.

It gave food for thought about people who have to abandon homes and come here with nothing hoping for new lives and those who are already here and lose everything in sudden catastrophic events like the awful bush fires in New South Wales. May they be safe with their families too.

bribery and bags

A lot can happen before 9 o'clock. It's not just get up, get dressed and go!!! Is it?!

The Big Fella escaped at 7 o'clock. Chicken!

B1 was surprisingly organised and only took half an hour to eat brekky and ten minutes to put on two items of clothing.

B2 was anxious about an exam which he has studied hard for but might have jeopardised by sneaking his pie-pod into bed last night. He had spirals in his eyes.

After dropping the first two off, Fish and Lala started a long argument about who had his five dollars from the tooth fairy. The Big Tooth Fairy had taken pity after nearly throwing the last manky molar out several  times. Fish had lost the fiver from the elastic of his boxer shorts.

I drove Lala to school and told her I'd drop her away from the school because I had forgotten my hat in the heat of the five dollar moment. Of course I ran into somebody I knew with my naked head in the ten seconds it took her to get out of the car. My possum fluff was outed! 

Lala suggested I look under the left corner of the fridge for the five dollars. So I returned home to pretend to 'find' the money and get an apology from Fish. He left and Shorty picked up the baton. Refusal to go to kindy, wear non-pyjamas or a pony tail resulted in the promise of an ice cream on the way. I KNOW! Blatant bribery! It worked....

A satisfied customer.

 Then I returned home to this...

and this...

 and this! This is not a strip joint but there are items of sleepwear deposited all over the place. They don't put things away because they change up in the bathroom and don't want to walk back downstairs to their room.

 So I got a bit pro-active. These favourites were too small and destined for the oppy.

Instead they got the snip and lost their sleeves and collars.

They were turned inside out and sewn up with a very rough machine stitch across the bottom hem.

The pj's were inserted and now hang behind the bathroom door ready for tonight's lecture on self organisation.
It gave me a vague sense of having some control over something and if it doesn't work my friend told me to try putting their night clothes in the freezer for the day. She swears it worked on hers!

* Thanks to Gooseberry Jam for this recycling idea a long time ago.