Anna Dunnill

For a university creative writing class, I turned a written piece into a stop-motion animation. Actually, to be accurate, I turned half a written piece into an animation: somehow I didn’t quite register the enormous amount of work involved in making even a short and amateurish stop-motion within a limited time-frame.

Anyway, the video is in the post below. Here is the full text of the piece.

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I.
Here are some things we do in winter. We wear thick jumpers and snuggle into each other next to the fire. Everyone does this in winter, except people who don’t have jumpers, or fires, or other people. Another thing we do in winter is eat soup. Everyone does this, too, except people who don’t have soup and Andy Warhol. This is partly because he is dead and partly because for several years in the sixties he ate nothing but soup. If you were Andy Warhol you wouldn’t eat soup any more, either. If you were dead you wouldn’t eat anything, but especially not soup. Dead people hate soup.

II.
Dead people also hate these things: the colour yellow; trance music; being reminded that they are dead.

III.
In winter, when our breath is like smoke, we are really breathing the dead. They creep into the warmth of our mouths and we breathe them in and out like a bellows. When we kiss in winter we are mingling our ghosts. If you were dead, you would live inside my mouth, except when I eat soup.

IV.
If you were dead I’d never remind you that you were dead. I’d be very careful about that. Obviously, the trance music wouldn’t pose a problem, but what about pumpkin soup with cream? I guess there’d have to be some give-and-take, on your part, too, if you were dead and lived inside my mouth.

V.
Here’s something I was wondering. If I drank wine (red, not white, because white wine is yellowish really and I’d be careful about that kind of thing) would you get drunk too? Who would you try to kiss then? I’d like to know.

VI.
Of course, it could be the other way round – it could be me dead, and your mouth – but I hope not. I hate the taste of cigarettes. If you took a drag on a cigarette (and you would, even though you know I can’t stand the taste), smoke would fill your mouth and I’d melt into it and you’d breathe me out with the smoke, right out of you forever, like an exorcism. Do you know something? I bet you wouldn’t even notice.

VII.
Maybe, after all, I wouldn’t be so careful, if you were dead. Maybe I’d wear a yellow jumper. Maybe I’d get into trance music. Eat soup. Why shouldn’t I eat soup? You know, there’s another thing dead people hate: living people who know what they’re up to. Maybe if you were dead I’d keep my mouth closed, especially in winter. Maybe I’d stop speaking altogether, just in case you were trying to sneak in.

Some long overdue images from the residency at Central Institute of Technology. All photographs by Joanna Sulkowski.

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Instructions for Everyday Performance, 2011, performative installation (collage, photocopies, found images, watercolour, pencil, paper, masking tape).

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Sherpa (I will take you there), 2011, photocopied found image, board, bricks.

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Since then, I have participated in a two-month residency at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art as part of the Perth Zine Collective.

I have also been involved in setting up an artist-run initiative called Paper Mountain, which I am super excited about! It currently consists of studios for about 30 artists(!), and we’ll have a gallery/project space running by late January. Follow the blog (more content soon) and stay tuned for a killer first exhibition!

Blow (3), watercolour,graphite & collage on board, 2011.

I made this piece for the Central Art Auction, an annual fundraising event. The money goes towards producing a catalogue for the grad exhibition & I believe this year they made about $17000, which is awesome. I graduated from Central in 2008 (back when it was TAFE), did a residency there in 2009, & was in the WALLPAPER exhibition in 2010 at Gallery Central. I’m back again right now, doing another residency. The studio is beautiful and spacious and has amazing shopfront display windows. I am planning to do a work in the windows because they are too incredible to waste.

It’s really great to have a studio space again. I have been very productive.

Check out the pages in the sidebar to see more of my work. Hopefully I’ll be updating a bit more often.

This page is under construction, but do please check back soon!