Pictures 1954
Catalogue / Memoir
Introduction
Pictures
Objects
Animations
PICTURES are both finished and ephemeral works made for animations.
1949---- 1950---- 1951---- 1952---- 1953---- 1954---- 1955---- 1956---- 1957---- 1958---- 1959---- 1960---- 1961---- 1962---- 1963---- 1964---- 1965---- 1966---- 1967---- 1968---- 1969---- 1970---- 1971---- 1972---- 1973---- 1974---- 1975---- 1976---- 1977---- 1978---- 1979---- 1980---- 1981---- 1982---- 1983---- 1984---- 1985---- 1986---- 1987---- 1988---- 1989---- 1990---- 1991---- 1992---- 1993---- 1994---- 1995---- 1996---- 1997---- 1998---- 1999---- 2000---- 2001---- 2002---- 2003---- 2004---- 2005---- 2006---- 2007---- 2008---- 2009---- 2010---- 2011---- 2012---- 2013---- 2014---- 2015---- 2016---- 2017---- 2018---- 2019---- 2020---- 2021---- 2022---- 2023---- 2024---- 2025---- 2026----
England's Queen flies in, we sail out.
1954. Page 39 of Flying with my Sister
Picture book (2022)
Co-created with Claire Sives
CLICK on the Bird to download the picture book, Flying with my Sister:
In Christchurch my sister Nadya and I stand in the street and watch Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh drive by as they tour the colonies.
We stand waving flags, our tiny feet in tiny shoes,
socks trimmed with crowns, machine embroidered.
1954. Photo of me with my sister Nadya
in Christchurch before sailing to Australia.
Our family sails from New Zealand to Australia. Noel holds me tight through a howling gale. The ship pitches and rolls. Mum and Nadya are seasick below. We dock at Port Melbourne on August 8 (my 5th birthday).
Years later I sail through storms in the Southern Ocean, held tight in my new lover's arms. Memories merge to stir my greatest fears and greatest loves - fear of disorientation and love for my father, anchor of my life.
This picture combines my memory of the 1954 sea voyage with my family from Christchurch New Zealand to Port Melbourne, Australia, and my new knowledge of the movement of the south magnetic pole - knowledge shared by scientists on the 2001-2002 voyage.
The south magnetic pole
wanders over time.
Everything shifts
around me...
I find joy crossing the line between between art and data - imagination and fact.
42 Days - An Antarctic Journey
2002. Change. Digital image
Day 09 /03.02.02 / 60s 107e
from 42 Days - An Antarctic Journey
This is one from a series of 42 prints I made to share my experience of the 2001-2002 (V7) marine science voyage with the Australian Antarctic Division.
For every day of the 42-day voyage I made an image and a wave form (tracing of a sound wave) of me speaking a word. "Change" is the word I chose for day nine of the voyage because that's how I felt, changed by crossing the Southern Ocean.
That monstrous watery shape in the black rectangle is an inverted (negative) image of a pool of black ink on white paper that was formed by the pitching and rolling of the ship.
circa 1931. Photo of Tom at Talisman,
Kallista, where I lived with my family.
Noel said this photo was taken the year Tom died. That would make it 1931, twenty three years before we came to live in Talisman. Noel said he was hopeless at maths and did not expect me to be good at maths either. So I do my best to get dates right but am happy to be corrected.
Can you see a traveling clock on the mantelpiece? Tom's only son Caleb passed that on to Noel who later passed it on to my brother Tom. The workings of the clock are housed in a fine gold metal frame with glass sides all around, like a miniature display case in a museum. That glassy housing is in turn encased by a sturdy box made of wood and leather, like a tiny suitcase. I remember the inside glass and metal case feeling cold against my small hands, and the outside wood and leather case looking worn and feeling warm as if from many hands around it over many years. There's a tiny metal key for opening the door to the workings of the clock. Noel would let me hold the key when he opened the glass door to adjust the mechanism. I felt comforted by the soft ticking of this old clock.
In the garden around the house and studio are trees, shrubs, flowers - English and Australian species - reflecting the landscapes Tom and Lillie loved. Years later a woman called Larry Chambers bought the house. She ran a local nursery. I wrote to her to ask about the garden. She wrote back with a list of everything she saw was growing. Tom painted pictures. Lillie drew and painted. She also carved and gilded wooden picture frames. Journals and visitor's books are kept in wooden chests and brought out when people came. They included drawings by adults and children. And photos. Hanging on walls are artworks by Tom. Also on the walls are a shield, a woomera and other things that, according to Noel were gifts from Aboriginal people he had met during his travels. Lithographic plates etched by Tom's friend Jessie Traille are set into fireplaces that radiate from the central fireplace. The lithographic plate above the hearth in the room I shared with Nadya shows a silhouette of English trees.
Photo of my father
When Tom Roberts lived at Talisman
EVENTS
1954: 3 February - Elizabeth II arrives in Sydney on her first visit as monarch
1954:13 February - Mawson Station in the Australian Antarctic Territory is established During February, a cyclone hits the Gold Coast and northern New South Wales, killing 26
1954: 1 March - Adelaide and large parts of southern South Australia are shaken by a 5.6 magnitude earthquake, resulting in the injuries of 16 people, and a damage bill of £17 million (2017: $578 million).
1954: 3 April - Vladimir Petrov, a Soviet diplomat, defects to Australia, sparking the Petrov Affair
1954: Shirley Bliss wins the Miss Australia Quest
1954: On 31 October, the first Vickers Viscount aircraft delivered to Australia crashed at Mangalore Airport while on a training flight only days after its arrival in Australia, killing 3 of the 7 people on board.[2]
1954: The Australian Academy of Science is established.
1954: Ivor Hele wins the Archibald Prize with his portrait of Rt Hon R G Menzies, PC, CH, QC, MP
1954: Charles Bannon wins the Blake Prize for Religious Art with his work Judas Iscariot
1954: Overland literary magazine is founded, edited by Stephen Murray-Smith
Written by me, Lisa Roberts/Euphausia superba (Antarctic krill), on
30/08/2026
