The Sand and Stars of Timbuktu

The Sand and Stars of Timbuktu

Maxime Banks

G3 Artspace
Parkdale, Victoria  Australia

Opening: Friday 17^th January 2014, 6-8pm
Exhibition: Saturday 18^th January – Wednesday 12^th February 2014

An artist’s poetic navigation through a narrative of place and identity, language and knowledge inspires this multidisciplinary exhibition by Maxime Banks. Her migration story to Australia creates a heightened anxiety of displacement and otherness which informs her work and in this arts installation of visual art, performance, sound and video.

Maxime explores her history as an African American artist living and working in Parkdale and uses the drama of ancient African astronomers as she aligns her history with their history of migration and fragmentation. Her exhibition is a sensory experience encompassing original poetic text written in French, English and Arabic and the rich language of imagery on paper, canvas and textile stirring up the sands of spirituality
and the dust of memory.

The opening night will premiere the short film Banks has created specifically for the exhibition as well as spoken word performance and sound projection. Maxime’s storytelling through art captures her audience and transports them on her journey.

Buitiful down here below

Buitiful down here below

A boy like that will kill your muothah stick to your kind New York streets alleyways dither dither dither Maria i just met a boy a girl named Maria Maria. A boy like that.

Lotus camel caramel legs sitting on a blue mattress in mentone. Vagina shell pods abreast green grasses hanging like bats bats hanging like bunches of grapes past Mentone Uniting Church Venice Street. 2 souls in beach chairs talk looking afront the beige square monstrosity Villa on Venice the man in a cotton hat i wonder the decor inside the lovely architecture and a voyage to Tuscany et Firenze cette annee. How come bees hum hum hummmmming aloft a jacaranda tree.

I saw a bebe skull sitting in a white gum tree with flailing skins hanging sheets flayed bark paper in the afternoon sun on Naples Street the skull upside down staring speaking our silent language. I know i know she is me and i'm it i'm her there sitting waiting in the tree beneath branches and leaves a vision for birds and possums and creatures with my eyes that wander and...

Stick to your own kind your own kind Maria. Where does a magpie live when i don't see his black n white tail feathers? What type of bird was that i looked singing in that tree? he her with lightish blue feathers breast not at me but teasing another. Syrup and hot buttered biscuits from mama's oven in the kitchen a brown tiled linoleum floor avec squares. Golden yellow couches legs across me and my brother Noah caramel smiles unaged teeth the future in front of us both. I want eggs. Loggerhead turtles dancing in turquoise waters South Pacific island Anuta slurping live electric worms 1 special minutes of the year. Killer sharks homing to savage young albatrosses burdened with the weight of inexperience and myopic wings. Patient sharks feed from tables of ocean pacific and smile gleefully unashamed to prostrate jutting triangle daggers that kiss the clear blue heavens with Darwinian sunshine a nonchalant instinct supine et sublime. Gather me there my ocean friend.

Take me home riding the dorsals of water creatures in the deep the deep deep depths take me home a somewhere else my strong golden thighs grasping pale grey blubber flesh a lasso thru jagged open territory guides me through darkened caves deep deep I'm there i'm there unafraid a faint light reddish seen off yonder there take me there take me there my ocean water creature friend. I've returned Is this home where i once was? Do they remembre moi ici? Do you recognize my face i don't have dorsal fins but I got 10 toes prehistoric and a long graceful neck is the sea turtle my cousin? Am i a crab sans a vertebra or an occipital bone? I love i am loved here beneath the horizon ships glide
above far above.

I'm here down below. I never knew you Abbey Lincoln but i heard your searing i miss you i have left you your soulfulness your struggle for an honesty with a price and sacrifice paid. A long life blessed with a meaning seen no felt et heard adorning a leopard cheetah fedora cool authentic beauty astrut a New York street stands with a poetic fist pavement proud existentially alone though a legacy left of millions through time et art. Heard around miles ears and hearts that need touching ahahhhaaahhhhhahhh help me! down here below i'm coming i'm coming take me lost but not alone these creatures these creatures down below sont mes amies The ocean now my home here below ballast moi give me strength i'm here below the inkness surrounds me i swallow long hard and i breathe i like it i likit it is my nectar my jus d'orange drank sur paris streets a pres de L'arc de Triomphe. Where does Haytham a Jordanian lion sit now? I remember his touch thick black hair eyes of owl round protuberances that loved me as a funny clown wearing a red nose earning the crowds coins dans les Champs l'Elysees et chaque annee sur la plage de Rimini en Italie at night in front of cafes with chairs sitting on la rue La Defense in the Baron Haussmann distance a citadel rectangle Place de la Concorde Balzac grande et noir granite cloaked in history et words in novels during times of blood et slaughter. I remembre 12 Bis Ave rue Mac Mahon avec 125 escaliers j'ai marche Rue de Kleber apres class @ Parsons Paris making fashion et learning life sometimes afraid mais toujours aware that this is now and it's passing et i'm i'm it now. I remembre and je think i think Je pense Awakening
j'ai awakening. I'm in the deep sea creatures swimming surround me I'm safe here
it is warm it is wet.

Will mama visit me here? I'm waiting to hold her to embrace my past and remembre et talk talk about baked sweet potatoes hot out of the oven cold butter mingling avec orange flesh and ate with her Southern mouth et eyes resigned to what is. Did she have any regret or remorse any unsaid feelings as the heat of the sweet potatoe with blackened skin suckled her nose and touched the tip of mama's tongue? Did she wonder her children's scars and their fears their nightmares and the dark closed closets? Does she savour synaptic spaces of betrayal a love concrete yet mute? Does mama know that her loving me continues to erupt and sprew spilling from volcanoes that scorch my brain creating spirit craters that transfigure? Do the dead suffer?

I am floating now floating between today and the day i too become bone. I go down into the deep. My home i live below below down there below. The ocean creatures these beasts of the sea below are my family sustain me above aloft searching for. I am alone and love down here below. Sea turtles are my friends. We dance we laugh. We swallow life and breathe. We tell each other our story. Water waits. I am swimming among memory down here below. Sea beasts are my brothers and sisters. I feel this visceral wetness caressing naked raw buitiful am I. The sea the sea deep has become grey and white.
We carry each other home.

--maxime
le 3, 4 janvier 2011

Cups Saucers and Jars

Cups Saucers and Jars

Life is life is life. A challenging beautiful joyous oftentimes cruel brutal mystical thing, overflowing with a melange of emotions simple and complex that exists as is. Cups of hope and sometimes saucers of despair. And faith found in jars with tops on shelves that need to be reached on high ladders taken down unscrewed and opened and held looked inside.

--20 dec 2010 le matin/morning

Cut your heart out

Tell me that you love me or I will cut your heart out. A wild melancholic gratitude undressing lostness. Her hands parting above purple waters. A red star rising. I am the majesty of a day ascending. -- 15 April 2011 23 September 2010

walk with me a while

Study the glory of the sky.
The doors of life open wide.
If the sunshine hurts your eyes,
close quietly and breath.
Come take my hand and walk with me.
Walk with me a while.
Let me.

--31 October 2010

Cipher

Emptiness begins to speak its own past. To see the colour red as it really is. Life a hinterland of reflection and symbols. A cipher unshaped. Not some thing new, but a thing known. A revenant in different form. Things endure while the living lapse. Beauty is here. A thing wondrous, really. --18, 19 june 2010

Alaga Syrup

Hasty compassion rooted in a mind elsewhere. Fried chicken, rice and gravy untouchable tempting the table. Fresh milk of cow on Wisconsin farms drank warm from neglectful hands.
Scars rant. Glimmering branch sprouting void. Plumppest sweet worms grummy mites scurry the unlighted crumbling world beneath sights of wishing grasping helpless moments.
Sounds of love's glance away. Inhaling the power of words to transform heal. Tasting Alaga syrup wseeping Wonder Bread.

--24,31 May 1,2 June 2010

Das Lied Von Der Erde

Farewell.
And almost no pain
all all die but once
the ape in the tree
Mahler's refrain an epitaph.

1907 a fortunate rural summer
then thin autumn frost
all this life.

Death is no end
where i go
clouds mist eternal.

Singing in the dead night
the exquisite hour ends
where it began.

An invisible palm
plump rose crevices.
Knowledge to be lost.
Song of my wandering heart.

-- 29, 30 May, 2010

proscenium

Au revoir
who knows when you came
your time
we all need a story
i'm returning a lost story
the loneliness seen in houses
how do you think how we live
we live for romance
a man in the street
isolated hope
maybe i'll go that way
a poem on a coffin
in a cave
well parsed hours
a proscenium
the stage declines
goodbye stranger
nothing need know your origins
how much we lose along empty words
you i never knew
always sloping towards the light.

--22 may 2010 (apres-midi)

wanna breathe ginger ginger mint osso bucco bones

What is it too coming around again To fly beyond away over there over there What's it all about Breasts tipping milk laddles of love might not get none Red spit spat on pavement Daddy arms around surrounding me red fingernails grow wild long fierce can cut gotta sister named Nellie Sue What's all this love thang about get over We fall over its a love thang coming round again aint nobody love you better Look into my mother's eyes daoent daoent daoent daoent warm and tender sweet surrender I'm a red oiseau got walk supple thighs reaching forward It's a battle royale stepping through my big toe curved against black et white print Sydney days at Centennial Park A Black swan laying in water round I think of the possibility of a Black Swan unseen that exists in realm my mind flux fluctuates mind over matter though i aint stopping no no here it comes Sister Sister going to Phoenix leaving on a jet plane broken back spines driving from something late at night crash into me the songs in my head you me for you and me crash into me A beautiful day a bird call it speaks once a sound along reap my soul coming back here now performing monkey bars swinging writing a life a dream of what once was for you for me and the bell tolls sweet like candy a birds thin leg breaks but not broken 2 metres span wings soars i gotta draw these words overtaking me mind full things coming coming dont drown moi wanna breathe ginger ginger mint osso bucco bones saving me and for them I'm a oiseau flying flown away there for you for me a pellegrini cafe at night with love a sweet dark chocolate love thang i tasted drank it all in down my throat then smiled aahh Life's a beautiful thing eh gotta give it up What's it all about you know? Red roses red roses caressing feet toes of stone anything is possible White ladder long my time is now aint no coming back prehistoric toes aint they beautiful hell yeah! I feel that feel it. And the heart says whatever. The moment of sweetness was agonizing then gone gone.

--20 may 2010 (morning before 11am)

I carry my wings on my back

The country of narrative. I've come to the end of something. There is no end to the other world. The wooden boxes eat or be eaten cold grace a knife and a fork. My story will not be told once but twice and more an altered grey set to music that becomes our lives a life of crumpled pages hoping not impermanent words that belie what once now gone to ash or a teeth discovered under a hand of cast stars a warm finger waking up after the storm flashes leaving my dream the sun glooming remnants of the slow vocabulary of what i recollect best. The glass is already under the skin the landscape of its own tension floating in the ether of its own content Our lives are memory we had in another life Clouds still follow us as in the old sky. A metaphor. I want to walk in amber Amber memory translucent swirl sharp et murky. Memory has no memory. Our lives are like summer cotton, an abyss and that's no metaphor. The radiant glow that washed me a golden glow in good gradual time Silence can be healing or a death Childhood has trememdous shape a wild animal hiding out but never disappearing half seen flickering in out of the forest underground under a boundless canopy. Life is a drop a stone of amber backlit Everything we are becomes what we are not I carry my wings on my back.

--20 may 2010

Labyrinthine

Out of the night i come go creep creep hear say moi now now what latitudes lay lie i've come without a country lay me down in thick grass yellow bells bending in yellow light Where is the destiny i'm yearning for you and moi I can't see it it is there the sea the sea here we go round the sadie tree the sadie tree make love to me now sweetest honey dew do do it now Release realize moi Chisel cuts above hanging time i know i know vodka bottle with a goose neck crush crash oh no! I've always wanted to be free explore things thoughts but drinking green the tea thetea ilikit pt a dialogue of senses hungry for breakfast at things i go wanna be starting something stuck in the middle yeah yeah miss you Michael Jackson Indiana boy. an orange doric column recalls recollects moi sensibility. Children parting dirt rows playing store collecting food boxes hand me down clothes stolen at night Im a red oisseau a bird flown flying above the tips tall trees im way way high floating in the mist afraid and free the costs to be of freedom to be alone I see the sky I am the sky a circumference of wide winding Mediterranean turquoise bleu violet lavender rose a sea turtle's skull sockets black hole ignots where eyes lived long before i come here to be. I am a sea swimming the waves surge and fall sans my knowledge but i know they swallow and vomit the fears of flying above. My eagle eyes see the water seas and know it this too shall end fini up up stairs of glory yellow fresh corn delicious hot muum I'm a oisseau a bird don't you know? I see the clouds they rain down blue still sky on the road to tarascon sunflower miles. I've always been felt like an odd cougar scream at night in the dark searching to say and be what a some kind of it thing. I have arrived now and im fierce strutting down. aint no afraid now I'm a peacock belle avec tattered feathers tail but dont see it i know it's all right as should be. I'm a oisseau avec caramel legs red fangs claws in Khazhstan on the banded arm of the white haired eagletierre lift off taking flight. I'm a oisseau flying high soaring above it all. I no longer see the trees. There are none here.

-- 19 may 2010

Breathing beneath the sea

When I was small and a child I felt extraordinary and insufficient, defective somehow. Missing something while having too much. Too much musing and feeling. That I suffered fear and sensitivity.

Being human is difficult. When we lose someone we love we're confronted with the knowledge of how small we are. How wondrous and immense the sky continues to be.

Always visions of a rhythmic wild inky mass terrifies me as I sense my head succumbing beneath the blackened night. I imagine the abysmal bottom.

I'm breathing beneath the sea.
Creating sounds whales hear and speak.

----28 april 2010

ache what we do for each other
voice a scavenger roaming
words sans sound

-- 23, 24 april 2010

yellow grey

Every moment all things are going to happen. There are times one wonders of pink pigs on a soft couch. One day violent heat yellow grey sensation of whispers.

Sodden eyes ignite reflection.
She still feels her round belly fly up.
We are both here.

---22 april 2010

scream

I've felt loved and a killing like a cougar scream at night.

--le 7 avril 2010

me here And there

There is so much. All this space, this space inside. Unfocused outlines. Visual thoughts that haunting keeping me here. And there.

An orange doric column. A wool dress. Black mane thick standing straight the sidewalk smiling a beauty admired and despised. The concave slope of dense shoulders persisting tforward.

-- le 7, 9 24 avril 2010

fear

FacIng my fears

--23 march 2010

Curved Air

Curved air

The land the trees are running
Curved air
Furtive bliss
Stone upon stone

Blood like love hang
Hymnal bloom
Words touch
Feeling time

I see it I see it there
Life persists
My face turning
The grasses are singing

---18 march 2010

bridges

There is a pleasure a kind of certainty.
Once in a life they become mine then yours.
The living eat the thoughts of the dead.
Do what you must to be happy in this world
There is so much beauty.

---6 march 2010, 19 november 2010