I think of a gnome and I think of a silver gelatin photograph by Ricky Maynard called Heart Break from his 2005 series, Portrait of a distant land. The distant land is the north-east of Tasmania, but looking across the water to the mainland. A man stands in waders, looking out to the sea. His whole body fits underneath the horizon line. He’s in the water, standing in it, but his image is reflected in it too. He’s not up to his neck, he’s up to his whole entire body. I think about the ceramic gnome (peeping toms, neighborhood watch, painted eyes that follow you around the room) being pulled out of Phillip’s car, how the gnome is transplanted from nowhere in particular to someplace else. And then I think of Ricky Maynard’s image where the man is part of the sea, in under it, of it.
Gnomes are an empty way to mark colonial space, all ceramic rim and air inside. The fictional colonial figure of the hysterical woman in nonsensical fits of speech seems like a way to avoid real genocide of colonial past. Spirit communication sounds abstract when unhinged from actual frontier violence. I think of Hanging Rock and Amy Spiers’ ongoing project to get rid of Miranda in Miranda Must Go, to remove the ‘white vanishing myth’ of Picnic at Hanging Rock and instead look at the actual losses and trauma at Hanging Rock for Aboriginal people. Picnic at Hanging Rock was a fiction written in 1967, set in 1900. Are the gnomes in on some sort of pantomime parody? I am also reminded of traditions in Tasmanian colonial houses where British convicts brought their fears and superstitions with them: shoving old boots and clothing up chimneys, or in windows and doorways, passages where spirits could travel, to stop them. Superstition can be used to scramble and avoid, making truth shimmer or disappear.
Gnomes are on repeat; they are more than twins, they are copies of copies. Phillip has hidden them with some furniture he doesn’t want and prints of his work up a staircase in a storage cupboard. He’s organized them like the Mona Lisa, eyes all facing the front, watching, waiting.
Looking at these gnomes through Phillip’s eyes, fantasy seems to have everything to do with history.
It is possible to communicate with the dead.
It is possible to communicate with the dead via psychic ritual with gnomes.
Unfortunately, the practice of these rituals with gnomes that result in a clear communication with the spirit world can only be accessed on a remote farming property located on the northwestern Tasmanian coastline.
The audience will have to go there.
For centuries gnomes have been living with humans as various morphisms of plants and animals, and it is only recently they have evolved into ceramic garden objects of desire and distaste. A particular spiritually-evolved group of ceramic gnomes is currently in the possession of a farming family of long standing historic relevance to the western regions of Tasmania. The Legge-Willlkinson family of prosperous farmers dates back to the British colonisation of Tasmania in the early 1800s. The family settled near Rocky Cape, known for its caves of significant cultural and Aboriginal importance.
The family has taken enormous risk in recent years exposing their gnomes’ medium abilities. It was the year 1911 that young Jacinta Legge-Willlkinson, daughter of Alice and Jim, was discovered laying face down in a field in a condition by what is described in a forensic report held at the Bernie local courthouse as “spinning on the ground in a state of unsound persons of mind and in fits of nonsensical speech.” The report also records the whereabouts of several gnomes located in some proximity to her fitful body. Fortunately, no further reference can be found in any later reports explaining the gnomes’ presence in the field that day.
It is widely known in the region that over the last 150 years, the Legge-Willlkinson family have sporadically hosted clandestine séances on the property, with very few witnesses. To date, it is believed only a handful of people have experienced a gnome séance at the Legge-Willlkinson farm. However, in August of 2016, Mr. Felix Legge-Willlkinson, heir to the property and now 70 years of age, disclosed to me at the request of his dying father, Mr. Oliver Legge-Willlkinson, that the psychically gifted gnomes’ power of mediumship be brought to the world’s attention.
Subsequently I have signed an exclusive gnome séance travel package sponsorship deal with Virgin Airlines (in cooperation with the Legge-Wilkinson family) offering 25 audience members per month the once-in-a-lifetime experience of this psychic phenomenon.
My instinct (which is all I have to go on) is telling me to search for identical twins to participate in the next séance.