‘The Band’s Broken Up’ song/video – Modern Giant

Posted: October 21, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Music | Leave a comment

This is a video I made to the song we wrote with Modern Giant, ‘The Band’s Broken Up’, with me on vocals. Very proud of this song and the album we made as Modern Giant, called ‘Satellite Nights’, which is available from www.popboomerang.com. The precursor to The Aerial Maps, really.

Cricket Poetry Prize – ‘Broadcast Days’

Posted: October 21, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Writing | Leave a comment

This poem, titled ‘Broadcast Days’, was selected as a finalist in the 2011 Australian Cricket Poetry Prize. It didn’t win, but was ‘highly commended’.

Broadcast days

By Adam Gibson

across the rail yards, 
smoke rising in the afternoon,
you heard the sound of whistles and sirens and
the Eveleigh railmen screeching metal on metal,
and yet, still; the transistor sound of something distant,
ghost voices from the Overland Telegraph Line,
a lime green capsule transported from that distant ground,
hushing all into reverence, carrying 
like a thread of cotton on the westerly.

afternoon barefoot walks from Botany Road,
hearing the huddled cheers from the 
blood-gutter pubs of Chippendale,
the secret rituals of the radio broadcast of the match
in a time when we believed in soup and buttons,
in a time when we thought that everything was possible;

but, later, your father livid about the bowling, 
the grey-eyed uncles not speaking about that catch,
mum making herself scarce, invisible,
and it dawning on you that sometimes 
it's better not to know, 
sometimes it's better
not to hear a thing.

 

‘Upward Inflection’

Posted: October 14, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Artwork | Comments Off on ‘Upward Inflection’

This is a work I did that was chosen as a finalist in the 2011 Kudos Gallery Award. It didn’t win but it was nevertheless good to be selected to exhibit.

‘Megalopolis Kiss’

Posted: October 13, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Artwork | Comments Off on ‘Megalopolis Kiss’

(A work by Adam Gibson and Yi Xing Chen made during the 2010 Shanghai Porosity Studio at Dong Hua University, led by Professor Richar Goodwin and Emma Price from the College of Fine Arts in Sydney.)

Over the past couple of centuries, Shanghai has transformed from a town, to a city, to a “metropolis” and now to its present state of “megalopolis” – a 21st century super-city the size and scope of which never been seen in history. It is a city of massive construction and development but also one with 20 million people living in its confines.

This project investigates how people connect in such a city and how the search for love that can occur in the face of a near overwhelming cityscape. “Megalopolis Kiss” seeks to articulate the stillness that can occur when two people find each other and how the rest of the city’s chaos can be completely blocked out.

It is the city meeting the individual, it is the human face of the super-city …  it is the megalopolis meeting the kiss.

This work was exhibited in a video installation in a space at the Dong Hua University at the culmination of the 2010 Porosity Studio