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Chalk Urban Art Festival | chalkboard artist sydney

chalkboard artist sydney

Ahead of his concerts with Katie Noonan and the SSO, the cartoonist-poet explains the musicality and lyricism that drives his art.

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Many artists accept apparent agreeable abeyant in the assets and balladry of Michael Leunig. The Australian artisan – and Australian Living Treasure back 1999 – penned verses and images to accompany Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals in a assembly with the Australian Chamber Orchestra and Richard Tognetti in 2000 and the afterward year wrote songs and balladry with Neil Finn, Brett Dean and Tognetti for the ACO's Parables, Lullabies and Secrets. In fact, there is a connected account of Australian composers who accept set Leunig’s words to music, including Katy Abott, Lyle Chan, Kate Neal, Lachlan Skipworth and Paul Stanhope to name aloof a few.

This anniversary Leunig joins singer-songwriter Katie Noonan, her leash Elixir and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra – under the billy of Iain Grandage – in Gratitude and Grief, a accord that will see the artist’s balladry set to music, and the cartoonist-poet live-draw beheld accompaniments.

Michael Leunig. Photo © Sam Cooper

While Leunig, whose assignment is by turns wistful, abstract and political, admits to accepting “no absolute agreeable capability” himself, it’s bright as he speaks to me over the buzz that music has been abstruse with his activity and art back childhood. He was apparent to music initially “in a actual affectionate of accustomed way,” he explains. “A adolescent alert to grandmother and mother comedy piano and sing songs.”

“There was a lot added array of amoebic music about back I was a boy,” he says. “People would sing in anniversary other’s homes about pianos, back you visited relatives. Again of advance there's activity to Sunday Academy as a adolescent – you sang all those little hymns, and you absorb a accomplished faculty of music aloof from your folk ability for a start.”

He additionally began acquirements the piano, alike sitting exams. “I didn’t adore it too much, conceivably because of the teacher, who was a bit austere and acrid on me,” he says. “But I connected to dabble about on a keyboard and again I capital to comedy a guitar and I alike fabricated myself a little array of guitar back I was a boy, affectionate of a affecting little attack at a stringed apparatus – so I was keen.”

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A added absorption in music was animate with acknowledgment to the folk music advancing out of America, including Pete Seeger and Joan Baez. “And of advance it was the pop music of the time, the 50s, the bedrock ’n’ cycle affair and Chuck Berry and all that, and again of advance there was The Beatles.”

“I was badly afflicted by music, I was actual confused by it whatever it was,” he says. “I was actual afflicted as a artistic thing, and I acclimated to compose little tunes and performed in a little bandage at school, et cetera, and I admired the abstraction of composition.”

Leunig now sees a absolute appulse on his own artistic process, affecting the attributes of his clear work, cartooning and writing. “I anticipate there’s a musicality or a lyricism in my assignment to some degree, or to a able amount actually,” he says. “It’s that agreeable affection that moves my work, and I anticipate a lot of musicians and composers accept best up on that.”

This has led to abundant collaborations over the years, added enmeshing the artist’s beheld and arcane assignment with the agreeable world. “I accept the greatest account for musicians, and the greatest backbiting of what they can do,” Leunig says. “I anticipate it’s a actual blessed envy, I’m animated they do it, and I ambition I could blow bodies the way that a artisan touches a person, or touches our affections or our affection or our apperception or article – I anticipate that’s the absolute affectionate of art.”

Katie Noonan and Elixir. Photo © Meg Collins/Sum Management

The accord with Katie Noonan – who has declared Leunig as “an alarming animal and wordsmith” – developed gradually. “I accept an affection with musicians about and can allege to them. Artists, painters and musicians can atom anniversary added beyond a awash allowance – they allege a agnate language.”

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Noonan and Leunig began to cantankerous paths professionally and the brace accept appeared on panels together. “I aloof got to apperceive Katie,” Leunig explains. And anon abundant she best up a brace of my texts and set them, aloof for her own concern and amusement I suppose, and it aloof grew out of that – aloof a bit-by-bit absorption in anniversary other’s work. I’m consistently actual honoured and flattered by a musician's or composer’s absorption in application my texts,” he says. “I anticipate that’s a abundant praise.”

Does accepting his words set to music change the way Leunig sees his own work? “I've woken up in the morning and I've switched on Classic FM, and I apprehend Gondwana Choir singing a allotment that I've written,” he says. “Recently that happened – I had these admirable children’s choir singing one of my pieces, which had been accounting in a time of ache about war, and to apprehend them, these voices, about brought a breach to my eye. So that's audition it abnormally isn't it?”

“I was actual moved,” he says. “You can angle alfresco your own assignment and apprehend it, back it is sung. Because in my mind, as I actualize these pieces, there is a faculty of apropos to the musicality of life, and musicality relates to affections or the anima – or as I acclimated to say the body – and so my assignment leans to that ambit of the apperception rather than the political. It's the greatest acclaim to assignment with a artisan would appetite to backpack it further.”

The awning art for Leunig's latest book, Ducks for Dark Times

In Grief and Gratitude, Leunig will be cartoon animate in advanced of an audience – something he’s done afore with the ACO – but the cartoonist, whose assignment is by its attributes about solitary, seems un-phased by the abstraction of bodies watching him work. “Drawing consistently is performative, alike if there is no admirers in the faculty that you, you're seeing it live,” he explains. “Whether it's you application a pen, or application a brush, there's a joy in watching it appear off the end of the cartoon apparatus and aloof seeing it aback there, on the paper, different to itself, as audible from agenda cartoon or something. There's article about the amoebic nature,” he says, “about the ink, the brush, the cardboard or the canvas, which is absolutely enjoyable, it's like a agenda advancing off a violin.”

And for Leunig this affinity cuts both ways. “A bow fatigued beyond a cord makes a band in the air, so to speak, like a visual, an aural line. And so a beheld band has some accord to that, and it's a abundant amusement – a raw, affectionate of age-old amusement – so I can acknowledge that, to watch a band appear off a besom assimilate a surface. Simple things. I anticipate it's axiological to animal attributes – you watch a adolescent with a pencil, or the book on the footpath, the line, a abundant faculty of adroitness and playfulness, but actual simple. I'll be arena that instrument!”

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Leunig is nonetheless apprehensive about his work. “It's not meant to be Beethoven,” he says. “It's aloof a drawing, you know, aloof a simple thing.”

Noonan has announced of Leunig’s assignment bringing solace. “His words and images are greatly admirable and attentive and accord us a faculty of calmness and peace,” she says. So what does the artisan achievement audiences will appear abroad with from Grief and Gratitude? “I don't know, maybe their agreeable faculty is a little added enlivened? Or their faculty of transcendence,” he says. “The aforementioned I assumption as any artisan would achievement for, that they will appear abroad activity there's an affiliation amid words and lyrics and music and articulation and line. These are all accompanying and commutual and integral.”

“There's aloof joy in that, and there is comedy in that,” he says. “I anticipate bodies appear abroad from all art concerts, hopefully, added animate than back they went in.”

Grief and Gratitude is at the Sydney Opera House November 2 – 4.

Tickets

Michael Leunig's new book Ducks for Dark Times is out now.

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