Bundanoon DanceFest

Managed another trip to the Southern Highlands, this time to the Bundanoon Bush Dancing Festival. I’m not usually one to kick up my heals, but I wanted another trip to this area and the DanceFest seemed like a good opportunity.

You can see the fun at their web site/.

I picked up some beeswax on this trip. I’d like a more tactile sense of what Ted was up to.

Deciphering Artefacts

I have now had some time to puzzle over the many artefacts uncovered in the cave and elsewhere. I am drawn with a strange fascination, deeply seated, at times disturbing, towards the primordial, emotionally laden images and objects. Some I would hold close. Some I would enshrine. Some are too deeply imbued with the personal lives of others so that I am shy to intrude. This is a story that unfolds not only here on Cockatoo but at remote locations that I hesitate to reveal.

X-Rays Penetrating Insight

Listening in on some of the conversations in Building 2, I find there is a great deal of interest in finding a deeper meaning in the objects discovered and even to wondering what’s inside these artefacts. My pursuit of their inner essence led me to the idea of taking x-rays of the objects. I was fortunate that a chance encounter with my veterinarian, Stephan Grey, led to a discussion of these matters and his assistance in gaining penetrating insight into the core of the objects.

To our great surprise we determined that a significant number contain items such as rings, necklaces, etc. This, of course, has led to a quandary as to whether we might retrieve these inner treasures at the risk of destroying the objects that contain them. Not wanting to destroy Ted and Nelly’s legacy, I have created several of these artefacts myself, had them x-rayed, and then proceeded to destroy them in order to get at their essence. But in the end I realized that however deeply the x-ray insight penetrated, there was always another elusive essence within to the vanishing point of svabhāvaśūnyatā.

गते गते पारगते पारसंगते बोधि स्वाहा

Gone Too Far


I just can’t keep quiet any more. She’s gone too far. This shelia named Irene, or something like that, asked if it would be alright to allow visitors to the Biennale of Sydney to come and have a look at the artefacts I’ve collected from the cave and the materials I’ve gathered to make sense of them. I wasn’t crazy about the idea, but she said that the Harbour Trust would allow me to keep all the artefacts and my work areas in Building 2 afterward so it seemed like a small price to pay. But she’s turned it into a bloody Freak Show Museum!!. Sure, we talked about putting some objects into protective cases for conservation, but nothing like these show-case vitrines. And why pick Object 5?! It’s demonic. It looks like the Horned Beast! Have you seen the shadow it casts on the wall late in the day?!

Not only that, but she allows people to look at private items from Ted and Nelly that I never planned to show anyone else. A whole Cabinet of Curiosities and Nelly’s picture on the wall! Never mind that she’s stealing my blog posts, printing them out, and putting them on the wall too. I think I’ll change the blog posting so people can see I had nothing to do with it. Maybe I’ll talk about a trip to Zaragoza or something completely different.

And, on top of it all, she says she talks to me regularly and knows what I think. I barely know her! And the staff sitting around there repeat everything she tells them and none of them has ever talked to me. She’s even putting videos up on YouTube. I mean Pompeii, really?

I’m not sure what to do. I don’t think I can shut it all down. I just hope that the promise of keeping Building 2 when this is all over doesn’t turn out to be hollow.

Reconciliation

I got quite a long email from Irene, whose name is actually Iris, in which she explained what she was trying to accomplish by allowing people to visit my work areas and see the artefacts I have been studying. I found her genuinely concerned about Ted and Nelly and as eager to understand their story as I am. I am hopeful that visitors may be motivated to help in the search to locate Nelly. I may have overreacted in my earlier rant about her and trust that we can now be friends. In fact, I now feel that I can learn much from her.

Screwed!!

I just got word that I will not be able to continue to use building 2 for my investigations into Ted’s work after the Biennale closes. Maybe Iris promised more than she could deliver or maybe she was deceived as well, but I must now scramble to find another location for all the artefacts and my work. I’m thinking of transporting them down to the highlands. Why are people so interested in these items if they are art but not otherwise? Is the Black Madonna a work of art or an object of personal devotion? This is the Word made Wax.

Pack Up and Get Out

As I already posted, any promise of continued use of building 2 was totally false.  Moreover, there has been a significant and odious dispute over who will retain all these objects after the Biennale of Sydney.  Only after threatening to bring a law suit have I been able to secure the rights to them.

I feel that I am best suited to the curation of these works as I am far from convinced that Thed is really Ted Wilson.  Iris is nowhere to be found and in any event I am skeptical that she truly understands these objects and I have had no response from Cristina/Nelly.  So I have decided to put them into storage.  I found a suitable spot at http://www.rentaspace.com.au/, a pest-free, 24/7 accessible facility.  I have taken some decisions about the future home of these objects, but more about that later.

My biggest problem at the moment is that the BoS ends this weekend and I am out of town.  I expect little support from the BoS people in securing Ted (and my) artefacts and so I am appealing to all my friends on Facebook to please go to the Island and help protect and safeguard these works.