spoken
When my firstborn was still a baby we moved to the suburb of Alphington. Our local park, adjacent to the oval, was so woeful at the time it topped the worst playgrounds of Melbourne list that someone had compiled and posted to the internet. It had one tree, a mature gum tree that in summer provided a sense of sanctuary even if not much shade. I’d push the pram there each day and place Otto into the stiff bucket and swing him back and forth, his view oscillating between a sea of tanbark below and the sky above. On one of these visits, Otto turned to me, pointed his pincer finger at the pale round moon in the sky and said “moon.”
It was his second-ever spoken word. How did he know it was the moon rather than the tanbark that mattered?
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There are four stages of the moth life cycle: eggs, larvae, cocoon, and adult.
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parallel play
Between the ages of 18-24 months, toddlers learn to parallel play, a form of play in which they occupy space adjacent to one another, sometimes observing, and occasionally interacting but without seeking to influence each other. Importantly, everyone is playing, no one is watching. This developmental stage of play is significant in shaping the skills and capacity for social play which follows.
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lunar cycle
I drive Otto on the weekends between music lessons and work facilitating some form of skill development. Here I am in the world, moving around with purpose, generally unobserved, my time is not especially my own but the way I spend it is of my choosing. Mostly I like being in motion and enjoy the sideways conversations which can be very funny but also laced with criticism and thinly veiled hostility. What I am describing is essentially the definition of obligation. One day I won’t be needed this way.
The moon above always reminds me of this fast-approaching moment and its unavoidable truth.
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a mirror
I follow a lot of baby and toddler accounts on Instagram documenting the exploits of twins. I am a twin, an identical twin, and I’m unfailingly moved by small people in relationship to one another. One of the earliest photographs of the two of us shows us seated side by side, indistinguishable from one another, and we think me pulling on my doppelganger’s ear.
Until recently I would stop parents out with their twins and share that I was a twin and point out their great fortune. Sounding like Whitney Huston, I would opine, it’s the greatest gift, being born a twin.
pulling the print
A monotype is a unique print, made by applying oil-based paint to a flat sheet, and in this instance copper. The painted image is pulled through a press and by that application of pressure, the image is transferred to paper. The paint itself is applied to the plate using two methods: the additive, in which oil paint is applied directly to the plate often using a brush, and the subtractive, in which the plate is covered with a layer of paint, and the image is formed by manipulating and removing the paint using tools, including brushes, rags, or finger.
It's a dynamic process, requiring speed and momentum, judgement, and intuition. The peeling back of the sheet and plate is a process of separation that yields a metamorphosis.
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pressure
Parenting is uniquely demanding. When you have small children any time away from them is experienced in a complicated way. In the ecosystem of the home, an absence of a partner is keenly felt. For the child, it’s also experienced as a pleasure and a state of tension. A parent stepping out the front door hears the clock and feels the pressure: to keep it short, to make it count, to be accountable. So long as your adrenal glands are not shot, in that pressured state, it’s possible to achieve a great deal.
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phases
The eight phases of the moon are, in order, a new moon, waxing crescent, first quarter, waxing gibbous, full moon, waning gibbous, third quarter and waning crescent. The cycle repeats once a month.
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relational psychotherapy
In psychotherapy therapists and patients work together to develop insight, into something previously unknown. That insight or discovery is not waiting to be uncovered like a bug under a leaf. It is co-created and co-discovered through interaction. This process generates new ways of not only self-understanding but new ways of seeing the world.
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vibrations
Attunement is a process of acknowledging and reacting to another person’s inner world. In children, attunement with a primary caregiver creates a sense of security and safety. In adults, it cultivates closeness and connection.
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dovetail
The three of us meet to review the prints a month after the residency. We sit around Emily Ferretti’s studio table sorting and moving the artwork into arrangements. In front of us lies a record of a creatively productive encounter.
We mostly talk about raising humans: Emily’s twins, Brendan’s baby and toddler, and my teens. Between us the full spectrum of childhood.
The monotypes bounce between abstraction and figuration. They are energetic and possess vitality, unapologetic in their directness and engage in playful candour. They share a vibrant palette and a loose gestural language. Lines in both artist's works zig-zag and loop, and individual motifs – a butterfly’s wings, the flutter of a falling leaf – dovetail into a glorious, harmonious cacophony.
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art is playful and play is social
Like the motion of cranking the printer arm to rotate the roller over sheet and plate to apply maximum pressure, Ferretti and Huntley have produced a body of work that harnesses the movement that governs the universe – the sun and the moon, trees and clouds, moths and butterflies, and human faces. In their presence we are placed in touch with transformation and growth, the very process of becoming.
Emily Ferretti & Brendan Huntley Cocoon Moon
28th – 30th April 2023
Negative Press
Naarm/Melbourne