{"id":4585,"date":"2021-11-18T16:22:57","date_gmt":"2021-11-18T05:52:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/?p=4585"},"modified":"2021-11-18T16:22:57","modified_gmt":"2021-11-18T05:52:57","slug":"stephanie-radok-becoming-bird","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/2021\/11\/stephanie-radok-becoming-bird\/","title":{"rendered":"Stephanie Radok’s BECOMING A BIRD"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Discovering<\/h1>\n

Wakefield Press have been pleased to host Flinders University Honours student Melanie Ross working as an intern in our office. During her time here, Melanie gravitated towards Stephanie Radok’s\u00a0Becoming a Bird: Untold stories about art<\/em>, a reflection on art and its purposes.<\/h1>\n

In twelve meditative stories, Stephanie Radok discovers that, mostly, we are all at home everywhere in this world.<\/p>\n

In a beautiful essay for Sydney Review of Books<\/em><\/a>, Martin Edmond writes that ‘The direction of indirection, or the discipline of indiscipline (to quote Frank Moorhouse) gives her writing a flow that is beguiling as well as relaxing.’<\/p>\n

Read on for Melanie’s thoughtful response to the book.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Words by Melanie Ross<\/pre>\n
Becoming a Bird: Untold stories about art<\/em> is a genre-bending wander of curiosity and exploration.<\/h1>\n
\"Steohanie<\/a>The twelve essays, named for each month of the year, reflect on a theme that traverses many ideas and impressions related to the artworks of Radok and other artists in museums, galleries or from her personal collection. Radok breaks us out of the restricted reality of pandemic living by taking us across international locales and Australian cities and regions, and giving us a glimpse of how art connects to memory, history, story and the everyday.<\/p>\n
In May\u2019s \u2018Wasting Time\u2019, Radok transports us from sitting on her veranda to reflecting on a postcard of a Turkish tile in the Topkapi Palace, South American photographic portraits at the Venice Biennale, a conversation at the Berlin Book Fair, the memory of a lost boomerang, a \u2018secret\u2019 book in the University of Adelaide library, and remembering a departed canine companion. This experience of the world through the eyes, ears, touch and heart of an artist is an adventure \u2013 you never quite know your final destination. There is quiet and room for pause too, especially in visiting Radok\u2019s intimate world of home and her interactions with the natural world.<\/p>\n
\n
In Becoming a Bird<\/em>, Radok encourages us to be curious and open-hearted \u2013 \u2018one thing art sometimes does is to remind us to look at just a surface for a moment and be with and see, really see<\/em>, what is in front of us. Here and everywhere but really really<\/em> here.\u2019<\/h1>\n<\/blockquote>\n
When we choose to look carefully like Radok, at art and the world we live in, our own adventures in memory and the imagination await us.<\/p>\n
Read more about\u00a0Becoming a Bird<\/em> here. Read Martin Edmond’s essay in full here<\/a>.<\/h1>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Wakefield Press have been pleased to host Flinders University Honours student Melanie Ross working as an intern in our office. During her time here, Melanie gravitated towards Stephanie Radok’s\u00a0Becoming a Bird: Untold stories about art, a reflection on art and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[80],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-for-fun"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4v1Of-1bX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4585"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4585\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4588,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4585\/revisions\/4588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}