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----
Life is a performance.
I watch other people's lives
and imagine other worlds.
In Christchurch my sister Nadya and I stand in the main street and watch
Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh drive by on their tour of the colonies.
We stand waving flags, our tiny feet in tiny shoes,
socks trimmed with crowns, machine embroidered.
1954. Page 39 of Flying with my Sister
Picture book (2022)
Co-created with Claire Sives
1954. Photo of me with my sister Nadya
in Christchurch before sailing to Australia.
Our family sails from New Zealand to Australia.
My father holds me tight through a howling gale.
The ship pitches and rolls.
Mum and Nadya are seasick below.
We dock at Port Melbourne on my 5th birthday.
Years later I sail through storms in the Southern Ocean.
My new love holds me tight.
I remember my childhood fear:
disorientation, not knowing my place.
The south magnetic pole
wanders over time.
Everything shifts
around me...
42 Days - An Antarctic Journey
2002. Change. Digital image
Day 09 /03.02.02 / 60s 107e
from 42 Days - An Antarctic Journey
Soon after we arrive in Australia, in August, my family comes to live at 'Talisman', Kallista, the house in Victoria's Dandenong Ranges, built by my great grandparents Tom and Lillie. They didn't actually build it themselves. They had people build it for them. There are photos of the house being built that show loads of wood being pulled up the hill by horses and carts.
Winters in Kallista were cold. There was often snow. There was always a fire going in the kitchen, and sometimes in other fire places that radiated from the central chimney.
circa 1931. Photo of Tom at Talisman
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 didn't 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. If I find that letter I will place a picture of it here.
Tom painted pictures. Lillie drew and painted. She also carved and gilded wooden picture frames. Visitor's books were kept in a wooden chest and brought out when people came. The books included drawings by adults and children. And photos. Hanging on the walls were artworks by Tom. Also 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, as far as I know, still set into fireplaces that radiate from the central chimney. 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
