As a viewer, I found myself negotiating the liminal space between garment and gesture, where the dissolution of structure becomes an act of resistance against the inherited architecture of dress. The silhouette, untethered from its historical obligations, performs a kind of quiet rebellion—one that exists not in opposition, but in suspension, hovering somewhere between intention and accident.

OK fair enough, that was written by AI.

Art Speak is generally meaningless gobble-de-gook even the speaker finds hard to interpret. Sounds as if it should be convincing until you try to pin it down. It leans on words like “liminal” and “gesture” to stretch a fairly simple idea into something unnecessarily dense. It uses unpronounceable nouns and jargon in an attempt to sound elitely creative.
We recently visited a fashion exhibition - Westwood | Kawakubo - at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV). Curation was similar to many fashion exhibitions. Start with a shock of extravagance, move gradually into Streetwear and finalize with Ballet Russu style exploitation.

Possibly one of the interesting things about such exhibitions are the individuals who
attend. They…or should I say we…are generally dressed in everyday streetwear, however there are those who arrived already part of the exhibition. You could spot them by how they carried themselves. Slightly slower, slightly louder. Conversations angled
outward….they could be heard.

There were the Opp Shop stylists.  Leather capped with multiple tattoos is as much part
of their fashion as the doctored clothes they wear.

Somewhere in the middle of all that, the actual clothes.

Modern fashion is an artform shaped by gravity and movement. Back in the 1920s, while Josephine Baker was dazzling Paris, fashion changed course pushing corsets to
one side. Fabric started to follow the body instead of correcting it.

I got a lot from this exhibition, the flow of materials suggest brush strokes, movement through compositions. colours and surface effects. The structure of fabrics in making
three dimensional forms that seem to ignore the rules of gravity. There’s a balance between control and release—sometimes subtle.

This exhibition was a tutorial in Art Speak. There were examples plastered over the walls. 

​I hope, in this memoir, Art Speak hasn't surfaced to confuse you the reader.

Merv Beamish
​April 2026

​Some university was — or possibly still is — running an online advert asking whether you’ve heard of the Magnificent Possum. It’s sole purpose appears to be inducing mild cognitive derailment.
 
The advert triggered a cacophony of overlapping stories from a gaggle of latte-drinking artists. It was a little early for their usual imbibement — though, with artists, it’s sometimes hard to tell. There were tales of the angry possum, the loving possum, the possum in the wall cavity, the possum whisperer, and finally a proposal to combine all of these into an illustrated children’s book.
 
Some mothers do have ’em. Artists, that is.
 
My contribution to the affray was The Possum Whisperer.
 
I grew up on a farm near Bungonia Gorge — where Ned Kelly was filmed, with Mick Jagger playing the outlaw. A little old-school building, miles from anywhere. One lunchtime we heard this truly wretching rumble in the roof. Dad leapt to his feet shouting expletives, grabbing his rifle and made for the door. My brother and I hastily followed. The bane of Dad’s life was possums and wombats. Mum came after him calling, “Tom, don’t you dare.”
 
Clinging to a small tree at the back of the house was a young possum. The tree was barely strong enough to support it and, being daylight, the poor thing seemed just as bewildered as we were.
 
Everyone froze.
 
Mum abruptly stepped between Dad and the tree.
 
“Winnie, be sensible,” Dad said. “That thing’ll tear your skin to shreds.”
 
She ignored him. Slowly, gently, she moves towards the tree, talking softly to the possum. It clung desperately, watching her warily. At one point Mum diverted her gaze elsewhere and extended her bare arm, still murmuring in calm, reassuring tones. Dad motioned for us to stay quiet and not move.
 
Mum’s arm brushed the tree. She stopped talking and simply stood there, staring into the distance. I barely dared breathe.The possum, apparently deciding this was the least alarming option available, climbed onto her arm. Mum began talking again, looked at the little fella, and calmly gathered him up, carrying him off to safety.

Mum had that knack — sheep, cattle, dogs, you name it. She passed some of it down to me, though nothing like her abilities. I once talked down a guard dog in Poland, but suspect my Australian accent just confused it.
 
By the bye — the advert actually said Magic Possibility. I clearly need my hearing checked.


​Merv Beamish

​My mechanical knowledge begins and ends with kicking the tyres and looking suitably perplexed. Honestly, it seems to be genetic. During the Second World War, my father was in the Home Guard and assigned to a search-and-rescue boat in the English Channel. Because he raced motorbikes, they made him the engineer. One day, in rough weather, the engine died. Dad admitted later he hadn’t the faintest clue so cleaned the spark plugs and the engine restarted. The crew hailed him as a hero. Dad said he was utterly bewildered that it worked. I know the feeling.
 
My favourite vehicle was a 1994 Series Two Mitsubishi Delica. I called it “The Mothership,” These weren’t sold new in Australia, so they arrived as second-hand imports from Japan. Being an accessory nut, it soon became a money pit. A snorkel for deep water creek crossings, cruise control, a roo bar (not much use for camels), more floodlights than a country football oval, and enough solar and off-grid tech to power a regional town

​Fortunately, one of my art collectors was also a Delica devotee. He paid for my repairs and servicing in exchange for artwork. I converted it into a mobile studio and camper and spent about twelve weeks wandering inland Australia—Alice Springs, Lake Eyre, Coober Pedy, whatever dirt track pointed vaguely toward the horizon.
 
Travelling around the outback taught me so much and gave me experiences I'll never forget. There’s a magic half-hour around 6 pm--varies with location--when the flies have knocked off but the mozzies haven’t clocked on. The temperature drops, you set up camp, light the stove, and for a fragile window the outback feels almost hospitable.

​Once, on the Strzelecki track heading for Innamincki Trading Post, the Delica died. the heat felt somewhere almost biblical, near 50C I’d guess. A local in a battered ute stopped, you could see his immediate assessment on his face … ‘Blood city slicker’.  First, he asked me if I had enough to drink—clearly deciding I was hopeless--throws a six pack of XXXX at me, says he'll come back later to “fix it” and pissed off. True to his word, he returned at dusk with another six-pack, fixed the engine, taught me an updated vocabulary of Australian expletives, and disappeared into the night. That night the temperature plunged to feel like -10C but probably was around 8C -Aussie acclimatisation, anything lower than 10C feels like Antarctica.

Roadside stops had personality. There was a place on the SA/WA border called Border Town: a camping area and twenty little cabins arranged in an oval shape. A Truckies’ Chapel at one end and, at the other, a cabin with a red porch light. Interpret that as you will.
 
The Mothership’s finality came in Perth. When a Toyota 4WD back ended me. The Delica—lacking little resembling a chassis—folded like a concertina. 

​The silver lining? Because it was a rare import; the insurance company had classified it as a collector’s item. I got back every dollar I’d ever spent on it. A miracle worthy of Dad’s spark-plug moment.​​

Merv Beamish
November 2025

My career as a freelance writer has been a bit of a wild ride. I’ve written in boardrooms for big corporations — annual reports, speeches, published stuff. I’ve also worked in high-security environments, writing about submarines, frigates, and weapons systems. Then there were the technical manuals and reference books. Add to that a stint in magazine editing, ghost-writing PhD presentations, and even a couple of unpublished novels.
 
But my bread and butter came from technical writing — mostly reverse-engineering software and creating manuals to explain how it all worked.
 
People often ask, “With your learning difficulties, how on earth did you become a writer?”
 
Funny thing is, those very difficulties taught me how.
 
I once worked at the ANU as a matriculation officer — until I got fired. The typists were sick of fixing my spelling and grammar. And fair enough too. Back then, I got more rejections than acceptances. But I learned to adapt. I learned to cheat — creatively.
 
All through school, I found ways around the system. Talking homework on the bus. Scanning textbook indexes for clues. Twisting questions so I could answer the version I preferred. Forging Mum’s signature. Even inventing the occasional dog to eat my homework. I became pretty good at it.
 
The real skill wasn’t just in the tricks, but in the timing. I learned to read teachers — their moods,and their weaknesses. I’d ask dumb questions at just the right moment, when frustration would make them explain things in simple terms. Sure, it came with a bit of humiliation. But I treated humiliation as part of the learning process.
 
Nitpickers were my secret weapon. The bigger the perfectionist, the better. I’d let them “correct” my work and learn from scornful delights. You develop a thick skin doing that. Sometimes, I swear, my supervisors knew exactly what I was up to and let me get away with it.
 
Then came computers. A godsend. My first love was WordPerfect — a real word processor, not the fancy, bloated kind we have now. It was like coding, and coding made sense to me. Logical. Structured. It even had a primitive spellchecker that taught me where my writing went off the rails.
 
But the real breakthrough came from a book on speed reading. Oddly enough, it taught me how to write. I learned about line length, font size, spacing — all the invisible rhythms that make words flow. Those details shape the reader’s experience, set the pace, and carry emotion. It’s the music behind the words, the soundtrack that gives the story life. That book showed me how to write for the reader, not myself. It changed everything.
 
From there, it just… grew.


Merv Beamish
​November 2025

I married young, at 23. My wife quickly knocked some sense into me. She taught me to plan, to think ahead, and to act like a responsible human being. We both realised early on that marriage might have been a mistake, but we decided to make it work. For twenty years we built a life together, raised two wonderful sons, and enjoyed happiness—until we agreed it was time to change.
 
The next decade was less structured. A few short flings, a longer one with a French Moroccan air hostess (best left unspoken). I drifted back to my old ways, living by instinct. Surprisingly, it worked. Life was adventurous, sometimes reckless, but never dull. Then came Irina.
 
There are two versions of that story. One is romantic. The other is just as romantic, but far more tangled.
 
The romantic version: Two artists searching for a place to rent. They meet at a viewing above the old Marrickville Post Office. A modest flat with a kitchen, bathroom, office, and two large bedrooms. They talk about art, see the possibilities, and agree—the bedrooms could be studios, the office a shared, if cramped, bedroom. They move in together. That was 25 years ago, and they are still together. Ninety-nine percent true.
 
The missing details: I first saw Irina at a backyard party near Manly. She was stunning. Most of the guys couldn’t stop staring. She had arrived with a friend of mine, sat quietly, and looked uncomfortable in a crowd of drunk men arguing about football.
 
Months later, another friend asked me to make up a foursome at a French restaurant. Irina was the third guest. We talked about cameras, art, and life. She told me she was a nurse in a children’s cancer ward, exhausted by the relentless loss of life around her. I urged her to apply to art school and offered a way to cut costs —share a flat with me in Canterbury. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.
 
At the same time, I was completing a master’s degree at the Australian Film Television and Radio School. Of course, sharing a flat wasn’t easy. I’m Irish by descent. Irina, Polish descent. Our views on living arrangements clashed often, leading to short, fiery altercations. By the time the lease ended, we were both considering separate paths. And that’s when the truly romantic story begins.
 
Ten years ago we moved from Perth to Benalla. My youngest son, Craig, now works as a paramedic in Numurkah. My eldest, Kim, is a filmmaker, constantly travelling—at present he’s in Cambodia. And Irina and I? Still together. Still creating; Still writing our story ...

​Merv Beamish
​September 2025

​“Buckle up big-guy - it don’t get better from here on!” ... well said big Blue M&M, but my old man could have put it better.
 
I‘m reading a book by Judy Nunn “Show Time”- basically a family of show people who, in the late eighteen hundreds, travelled from England to Australia to join a travelling variety show. Chapter two brought tears to my eyes. They travelled on SS Oroya on the same route I took, as a five year old “ten pound pom’, fifty years later. Bay of Biscay storms, bum boats in Aden, Suez canal, Port Said, Ceylon…

​​We came on MS Georgic, an ex-troop carrier with one funnel blown off in the war and seemingly held together by several inches of accumulated paint. We left Tilbury Docks in September 1948.

​So many memories from that trip flooded back. One was the first real image of my dad, he was a gentle, I’d like to say Giant, wasn’t tall but broad - soft hearted, yet tough; strict but loving. Too loving, mum's eyes told a cheekier interpretation. He’d take the belt to us about twice a year, if we complained we didn’t do anything the reply would be ’Well this makes up for the times I didn’t catch you’. It wasn’t the belt that we feared, that was more noise than pain, but the guilt that we’d upset him.
 
There were a number of real “whinging Poms” on board, - you know, the London road sweep who believed himself the better of “illiterate colonials”.

​Deck space was limited and lined with too few canvas deck chairs. You needed to get in early to secure one. Hats and towels didn't mean a thing - someone would just remove them. Once mum and dad secured a couple and left me to hold them. A scrawny Cockney came along and demanded I get off. I was a stubborn five year old and wrapped my arms around the legs and stayed put.

​Soon mum came back and sat in her chair only to receive an abrupt lecture on teaching her kid to respect his elders, Then dad appeared, and firmly gripped the man’s shoulder, quietly saying "excuse me”. The man slunk away without a word. My parents said they were very proud of me. Frankly, truth is, I was probably too scared to move.
 
Dad was a brilliant story teller and although few heard it, had a wonderful singing voice. I’ll write more about that soon.
 
And yes - he always pinched the last blue M&M.

Merv Beamish
​August 2025

In our family we spoke three languages. The King’s English, Sarcasm and Expletives. The family eventually included four humans - Mum, Dad, my brother Brian, myself - and a few attachments in the form of dogs, cats, other animals and artists.
 
In 1938 Brian, my elder brother, was born at Shoreham-by-Sea, Sussex, England.  The little chap had a quite eventful and life altering early few years. He couldn't piss for a few weeks and was in severe pain. Then, a couple of years later, while playing with his mates in a playground, he was strafed by a German dive bomber, the pilot being either a terrible shot, or a very good one who only wanted to scare the kids.
 
The family lived halfway between a shipyard and a British fighter airfield. Dad later claimed more Polish fighter pilots were lost from doing victory rolls than in combat.
 
Brian was hurt when a de Havilland bomber fatally crashed at the airfield and saw the pilot and other personnel engulfed by flames.
 
Eventually Mum and Dad sent him to a school in the country to get away from the war and it was hit by a doodle bomb*.
 
Needless to say, Brian was quite affected by these experiences.
 
To top all that off, I was born 1943 and he now had a cantankerous little brother to deal with.
 
Brian died in 2014 in Brisbane. At his funeral, after a relative gave a summary of the
wonderful things he achieved in life, I was asked to speak.
 
My eulogy began “If you asked me, as a young boy, what I thought of my brother, I would probably have replied with a number of unpublishable expletives.”
 
I pity Mum and Dad. They had an uphill battle to keep us from killing each other. It might sound like we hated each other, but on the contrary, we always looked out for each other. No kid on the block would dare bully me without answering to my brother. A bit like the scene in the film ‘Wednesday” where Wednesday Adams confronts her brother's bullies at the swimming pool. She informs them that she is the only person that bullies her brother – then releases barracuda into the pool.
 
Brian had a dual personality, rough stand up to anyone and the soft help anyone. I don't remember him ever telling a lie, other than to protect me. I used to lie, cheat and negotiate my way out of most situations.
 
Brian was the person I'd go to for advice about boy’s matters or frustrations at school. About the time I was paying significant attention to my mother’s Life Drawing anatomy books, he told me how he and his mates would play cowboys and Indians at night on the local airfield. The boys would chase their dubiously dressed, or otherwise, girlfriends in their cars … in that case, I’m not sure if that was help or hindrance.

I finished my eulogy “I’ll wait to say goodbye to Brian ‘til next time I go walk about, as I’m prone to do. I’ll light a campfire and sit, and we’ll chat until the embers dim and the blue smoke dissipates to the sky. That is when we’ll say our goodbyes.”
 
Actually, I accidentally said ‘bushfire’ instead of ‘campfire’, which had the whole church laughing.  I think Brian would have enjoyed that.

Laika is out there somewhere among all those stars, petrified. The feeling in my chest was real a burning loneliness, a vastness beyond any comprehension. The regulated morsels of air seems to dissipate with gravity. Sounds, are there any, maybe some greynoise and click of instruments. The scenario is overpowering for me, poor Laika.

Sputnik 1 had been a much different scenario. October 1957 and Dad was the first to see it like a large star moving across the sky. We’d already heard the code it was broadcasting via a ham radio friend, but nobody knew what it was saying.

Sputnik 1 was an explosion of Sci Fi possibilities, all those Saturday afternoons watching Buck Rogers on the screen at the Odeon. If we couldn't sneak into the back rows, which depended on who was the usherette at the time, a sizable 11 pennies from our limited pocket money had to be forfeited. Mind you, the slightest misdemeanor and the manager's torch would search, and ticket or not, we'd be out on our ears.

Laika, a small terrier cross stray from the Moscow streets, became the first living creature from Earth to be launched into space. She was in Sputnik 2 launched in November 1957. In actual fact she died early in the flight from hyperthermia. It is also worth noting that the code broadcast from Sputnik 1 was meaningless in translation.

At the time I had a pet dog called Billy, he was also a stray, just showed up at our house and stayed for about 4 years before getting knocked down by a truck. We buried him in a shallow grave covered with a sheet of old roofing iron. Later mum planted strawberries on his grave, they didn't grow.

​Mervyn Beamish
March 2025