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MARTIN EDMOND, MAGGIE HALL: 'Histories of the Future'



Maggie Hall was born in Paddington, London, grew up in Canada and Australia and now lives in Newcastle, Australia. She is a performer, artist and animal lover. She has exhibited widely including 'TEXT ME' and the group exhibition 'BEYOND COLOUR', INSIDE OUTSIDE, 'not just collage' and 'THREE' at Newcastle's Gallery one3nine. Her forthcoming exhibition 'The Beach' at the Tap Gallery, 259 Riley Street, Surry Hills, Sydney runs from 1st - 14th May 2017.


'THE BEACH'
"I live in the city of Newcastle, NSW, Australia. It was founded more than two hundred years ago, as a convict settlement. Epochal changes are happening: the devastation of the natural world accelerates, the wreckage of a twentieth century industrial wasteland continues its decline. At this moment of closure and transition we are experiencing a period of extinction . . . the abandoned, the neglected, the despised, the condemned, those who will determine what happens . . . are the survivors. My neighbours bear witness every day of their lives to the destructive processes that surround us, this ‘human wreckage’ is testament to the forgotten and overlooked. Through religious belief and personal faith, through strength in adversity, through experience and built community, there is a hope and a knowledge that can survive any challenge. With intuition as my guide and an awareness of artistic tradition, I attempt to reveal presences that may give us clues as to what is real and unreal. I am not seeking a form of aesthetic contemplation, but a way of finding guidance. My photography is the documentation of this search, through which I express emotional realities primarily through the captured images of the lives we lead, and the environments in which we now live. Photographic evidence of present and past dilemmas and continuities . . . this is my determination."


MAGGIE HALL: Writing
'Opening Scene' online Arts and Literary magazine 'ARTS ZINE', (pages 88-93), March 2017.



Edmond, Martin (1952- ) is a writer, screenwriter, and a poet.

He was born in Ohakune, New Zealand, one of six children and the only son of Trevor and Lauris Edmond.

After briefly working as a Junior Lecturer at Victoria University, Edmond joined the avant-garde theatre group Red Mole, and in 1977 began to tour with them. These tours took him around New Zealand, to the United States, Mexico, the United Kingdom and Europe. In 1981 Edmond settled in Australia, where he still lives and works as a freelance writer.

Edmond’s first book of poems Streets of Music (1980) won the Jessie Mackay Award for Best First Book of Poetry 1980, and was followed by Houses, Days, Skies (1988). His first book of non-fiction The Autobiography of My Father (1992) won third prize at the Goodman Fielder Wattie Book Awards, 1993.

Edmond’s career as a scriptwriter includes the screenplays for the award-winning feature films: 'Illustrious Energy' (1988); 'The Footstep Man' (1992) and 'Terra Nova' (1998). He also wrote the screenplays for the short films, 'Philosophy' (1997) and' Earth Angel' (2002). 'Philosophy' won Best Short Film, New Zealand Film Awards 1999. 'Terra Nova' won best first film at the Montreal World Film Festival, 1998 and a Gold Award from the Australian Cinematographers Society in 1999. 'Earth Angel' was awarded Best Screenplay at the Breakfast Film and Music Festival, 2003.

Edmond’s other non-fiction works include Chemical Evolution: Drugs & Art Production 1970-80 (1997), The Resurrection of Philip Clairmont (1999) and Fenua Imi: the Pacific in History & Imaginary (2002) and Chronicle of the Unsung (2004). Chronicle of the Unsung received the Montana Award for Biography at the 2005 Montana New Zealand Book Awards.

Luca Antara: Passages in search of Australia (Addenda, 2006) was described by Nobel prize winner J M Coetzee as 'a book lover's book, a graceful and mesmerising blend of history, autobiography, travel, and romance. It is a companion piece to Chronicle of the Unsung.

Waimarino Country & other excursions (Auckland University Press, 2007) is a new collection of essays by Edmond, which have been described by the publisher as 'elegant discursions on themes of memory, words and travel.'

In 2013, Martin Edmond received the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement for Non-fiction.
Barefoot Years (Bridget Williams Books) was released in 2014. It explores the compelling yet fragmentary nature of recalling and describing childhood memory.

Published by Bridget Williams Books, The Dreaming Land (October 2015) is a frank and lyrical evocation of a childhood and adolescence spent in rural New Zealand in the 1950s and 60s, richly coloured with details that resonate across generations.

Histories of the Future, a collaboration with artist Maggie Hall and also released in 2015, was lauded by Peter Pierce in the Sydney Morning Herald:


He saves the book's most significant figure till last. Its final and finest part, "What Instruments We Have To Agree", is both an elegy for and an imagining of the death of his mother, the renowned New Zealand poet, Lauris Edmond.

In her house overlooking Oriental Bay, aged 75, she hears the telephone ringing "as if it were the future calling; as perhaps it is". Stricken by a heart attack she falls, as "the brain rehearses its last cloudy thoughts". Her six children attend the funeral and in the background "one old ewe, stately as if in a frieze from Persepolis, made her way along a flat grey slab in seeming fealty to the sacred occasion".

This is just one sample of the measured, eloquent force of Edmond's prose. Histories of the Future is a triumph of originality and daring, but also of a deep, reflective, poetic and unpretentious temperament. Congratulations to Walleah Press of Hobart for its publication, and to an author who has written one of the finest short books of the year.



REVIEWS OF 'HISTORIES OF THE FUTURE'

Peter Pierce, 'Sydney Morning Herald, 30th Oct 2015'


REVIEWS OF 'THE DREAMING LAND'

Philip Matthews, 'www.stuff.co.nz, 1st Nov 2015'


REVIEWS OF 'ETERNITIES'

Tim Wright, Cordite, 1st Jun 2013'


READINGS WITH MARTIN EDMOND

The Monthly Video: The Artists: Martin Edmond and Erik Jensen in conversation (Adelaide Writers’ Week 2015)

INTERVIEWS WITH MARTIN EDMOND

Conversations: Simon Comber: An interview with Martin Edmond (2014)
Cultural Icons: Conversations with Iconic People. Episode 22: Martin Edmond (video)
Questions and Answers: Mark Young and Martin Edmond (autumn 2004)