The Thousands

Bridget Currie’s 2009 aEaf show ‘Regulators’ was simple. There was a tree – an olive tree elegantly held aloft by a series of thin plywood planks, which were bowing under the pressure. Also there was a real nice scent floating around the gallery. The strength of the flexible planks was just enough to bear the weight of the tree, but I was heaps scared the whole thing would just fall apart. It struck me as a fragile form of perfection – a rational system held aloft by mechanics and magic. Sort of like the perfect hair day that occurs exactly thirteen days after your hair has been cut, twenty-three days before you can justify cutting it again, and lasts only twenty-four hours.

Alison Currie is a dancer. Dancing – real good dancing – seems to me like a similar kind of tenuous perfection to ‘Regulators’. The body is trained so the muscles can stretch, propel and support a perfect form that might only last a moment. Once I tried to re-enact the lift from Dirty Dancing. There was no perfect form. Alison & Bridget will be performing four times in the next month – from them you can expect more balance and poise than a drunk girl trying to jump into a substitute Swayze’s arms.