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Deirdre Plummer

@deirdreplummer

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Federal & Sydney. Things I see. Things I hear. All photos mine. No AI. (I don’t get how to do that…)

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Australia! It’s been such a happy visit! So many beautiful people who we love, a reminder that Aussie winter is nothing short of magic, some very happy music making, time in Sydney, Melbourne and the Farm, an epic Bush Doof to celebrate @nogunosa and @deirdreplummer 55 years of marriage, salt air in our lungs and sausage rolls and chicken parmigiana in our bellies! After 7 weeks away, Wien (and Jellyfish), we are coming for you!

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Shed 1, Lune de Sang
@chrofi_architects

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55 years ago, Deirdre and I got married in the Courthouse of Central City, Colorado. Judge D D Diamond officiated and he deputised two of his clerks as witnesses.

It was a secret wedding. We told no one…neither our families or friends knew.

Yikes.

After all these years and many shared adventures, Deirdre and I remain loving and devoted partners.

It was meant to be.

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Happy Mother’s Day to my Mum @deirdreplummer (and to the mothers that came after her @katybplummer @maxdelpop @alyssaplummer ). I love and am proud of and grateful for all of you!

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Happy Mother’s Day to the best. Below is an excerpt from a speech I gave this week at the girls school for a Mother’s Day breakfast. Love you mom! @deirdreplummer

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I immigrated from the USA in 1985, when I was six, with mum and dad, my two sisters and brother.

As immigrants with no extended family, my parents both worked incredibly hard building a new life in a new country with way too many children.

A few years in, mum decided it was important that we all go to private schools because some of us still couldn’t read. I started at Queenwood in year 3 along with my two sisters.

Things were wild, mum had her own aerobics business which she ran out of the Woolloomooloo police boys club, dad was locked in at work.

Mum drove a brown mini van with only two seats in the back, so we’d draw straws to avoid being the ones rolling around loose in the boot with the 30+ pairs of hand weights and huge speakers she brought to each class. It was deeply unsafe but more than that, it was so embarrassing.

Mum would pick us up from bottom school and would leap out of the van in her black unitard, red leotard over the top, double socks (different colours) and high-top Reeboks so she could pop the boot for to scramble in with our school bags hoping that no one was watching.

When mum was asked to be the parent speaker at my year 12 valedictory dinner, I was shocked, and apparently asked her why the school didn’t ask one of the good mums to do it.

My girls seemed to be equally shocked when I told them I was speaking today.

At the time, I thought my mum was incredibly embarrassing. But now, standing here, I see something very different. I see a woman who was resourceful, determined and absolutely committed to giving her children every opportunity she could.

What I once saw as chaos, I now recognise deeply as love in action.

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Couldn’t be prouder of Poppy at her concert tonight. The MAD team killed it, so much fun. 💙💙

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was lucky enough to go out to the hills to attend a wonderful art byron event at lune de sang - a glass workshop and talk by andy plummer - in conversation with alison kubler, the editor of vault magazine. zimmi forest was also there to talk about andy's legacy project. i learnt such a lot about andy's glass making practice, and zimmi's weaving process - in andy's purpose built glass studio and gallery. you just never know, or who, what you'll find in them thar' hills. seems there is a veritable haven of talented people living around here. i feel so very lucky to live in this area.
#glassart #weavingart

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My mama and me. Her mama, her mama with her mama, my papa’s mama and her mama. The line of mamas stretching further than we can see. HMD to those who celebrate.

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Happy Mother’s Day to the best! I have been blessed by you. ♥️

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Super excited to be installing two major works in one amazing space, so grateful to @maitlandregionalartgallery for hosting me.

Come to the opening March 28!

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The myth of the Eerie Wife exists on every continent.

A magical maiden is able to transform, at will, from human to animal, with her own enchanted animal skin. In every version of the story, a man becomes obsessed with her and steals her pelt, trapping her in human form, and pressing her into marriage and motherhood. She lives the life of a human wife: bearing children, performing chores, until finally, one day, her pelt is returned and she flies away.

My mother was a ballerina when she fell unexpectedly pregnant. Like so many young women, her creativity became something necessarily poured into whatever small domestic containers were available. She didn’t express discontent, exactly, but I could always see that her containers were too small, too easily packed away, too often derailed by circumstance. When I had my own child I was viscerally shocked by the world’s interpretation of my biological capacity, and I too quit making art, for years.

In this work, my nieces prepare a special witchy intergenerational performance of Swan Lake for my mother, and my kid goes on a quest to restore her pelt.

THE UBIQUITOUS MYTH OF THE EERIE WIFE is a response to Ron Muek’s Pregnant Woman and her self-contained occupation of @maitlandregionalartgallery . It’s also an artist-mother’s Spell For Flying, and a Lineage Spell to retroactively restore my mother’s autonomy (and her mother’s, and her mother’s…women whose relationship with creativity was hijacked by a cultural idea of motherhood). It’s also a Protective Spell: by reframing and transmitting the Eerie Wife myth through the young artists in my family, they can perhaps find new pathways through the cultural tangle of gender, agency, biology, love, parenthood and art.

It was my deepest pleasure to work again with @kubadora , @tamaraelkinsartist (as choreographer and performer) and @thereal_sallywhitwellmusic , as well as my brilliant nieces, my mama and my own lovely kid. It’ll open at the end of March at Maitland along with MARGARET AND THE GREY MARE. I’d love to see you there.

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I am the luckiest to have my whole family (minus of course my sweet hubby and kids and one nephew) to come and see me perform in Cinderella at @sydneyoperahouse . Thanks to my mum @deirdreplummer for organising the whole mess of humans! I love you all

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