Pictures 1967

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----  

Archaeology of the mind

I fantasize about being a nun, imagining myself free to think my own thoughts away from parents fighting. From my father's library I read Sigmund Freud, Joan Didion, Carson McCullers.

Mum drives me in her blue VW Beetle to the Golden Opportunity Shop. I find this book, "Art of Conversation" by Josephine Turck Baker (1873-1942). A heavy book bound in red textured fake leather. Holding it somehow comforts me as I imagine rules I could learn for conducting civil conversations.

Another day I'm specially upset by the fighting at home. I get to school early and go straight to the art room. I draw this:

1967 Hold Crayon on paper.
Joe Kiraly collection, Melbourne

The picture comes easily, like the waxy crayon knew where to go, sliding on the paper. Butchers paper, nothing special. But the feeling of drawing this felt special. As I drew I felt myself being held together in some kind of time zone where past, present and future co-exist. Was I going crazy? As I write today I imagine my teenage mind struggling to interpret what I'd read about Freud's "archaeology of the mind": generations of myself holding me together - mother and child, my past, present and future selves. Over my head Out of my depth.

Today, re-reading Didion's Slouching Towards Bethleham (1967), reflects back to me how I felt I was living within and beyond our small suburban home and our family's pretense of normal life.

Although Didion was writing about America I could see Australia heading that way.

The centre was not holding. It was a country of bankruptcy notices and public auction announcements and commonplace reports of casual killings and misplaced children and abandoned homes and vandals who misspelled even the four-letter words they scrawled.

From Slouching Towards Bethleham (1961)
by Joan Didion

Brother Tom would lie on the living room couch with his legs over the back rest, watching TV. Or he would make things, alone and with friends. Always doing something, he was the perfect model for me who loved to draw active people.

1967 My brother Tom Pencil on paper.
Tom Roberts collection, Melbourne

1967 Photo: Noel. Tom, friend, and TV
Glen Waverley

1967 Scientist David Bevan Carter in Antarctica

I met David Carter soon after his research work in Antarctica. He boarded with my grandmother Nora the same time I did. Like me, he studied at the University of Melbourne and needed a quiet place to think and write. We kept in touch. Up to the day he died. He was my second brother.

David died in March 2025. His Obituary, published by the ANARE Club, refers to his pioneering work with radio to measure ice thickness near Wilkes station, Antarctica. It's likely my father knew him from hosting people in his ham shack, to communicate with family members working in Antarctica.

In the 1950s Noel took me to see the Russian ballerina Maya Plisetskaya perform in Melbourne. She danced "the dying swan". For my birthday he gave me a large black and white photo of her final pose on the floor, with crossed legs and arms folded as wings. He'd bought the photo from The Age newspaper, enlarged and mounted on board. He hung it on my bedroom wall. For many years I was memerized by that swan, and my memory of seeing her whole body quivering, and the final twitch of her neck before she died.

Plisetskaya trained in the Vaganova method of dance, a method that engages the whole person - body, mind and spirit - the same method I was taught at the Victorian Ballet Guild, by Laurel Martyn and Valerie Grieg. In 1964 Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev came and watched our class. Years later I recognised a similar wholistic approach in the choreographies of Gertrud Bodenwieser that I had learned from her students Hanny Exhiner and Barbara Cuckson - all strong, intelligent women breaking free from oppression.

At high school a small boy with blue eyes and freckles looks up at me. He's wearing short trousers. I swear he was. Years later Andrew Morrish denies wearing short school trousers. Did I imagine that?

I injure both my knees. One from dancing, the other from helping to drag a boy's surfboard over sand, quickly so he could race in some competition. After knee operations I was told to stop dancing. So instead of going to after school ballet classes I join night school at the National Gallery School of Art. John Brack is Head of School and soon I would become his nude model.

EVENTS

Population estimated at 11,928,889.

Gough Whitlam replaces Arthur Caldwell as leader of the Australian Labour Party.

1967: Referendum confirmed by a 90.8 per cent 'yes' vote to end all forms of discrimination against Aborigines. Aborigines counted in national census for the first time and amendment of Section 51 of Constitution enabled Commonwealth Government to legislate for Aborigines in the states along with the State Governments.

1967: Prime Minister Harold Holt disappeared off the coast of Victoria at Portsea.

1967: The Australian Reform Movement, a splinter group of the Liberal Party, which opposed the war in Vietnam and Australia's involvement in it, was set up.

1967: Despite opposition from the conservationist bodies, Qld granted exploratory oil-drilling permits for large areas of the Barrier Reef. Public opposition to drilling grew over the next years and in 1970 a black-ban on the reef was recommended.

1967: Postcode system for mail introduced.

1967: The Australian-United States Joint Space Facility was established at Pine Gap, south west of Alice Springs.

The Australian Almanac, Pub. Angus & Robertson 1985

Written by me, Lisa Roberts/Euphausia superba (Antarctic krill) , on

23/08/2026

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