TUSALAVA AT THE TATE MODERN

Len arrived in England in 1926.  He had a portfolio of drawings under his arm, a head full of ideas about ‘movement’ and he was penniless.  A group of London artists took him under their wing, got him employment, and set him up on a barge, on the river Thames, near Hammersmith.  They were curious about this ‘vertical invader’ from the Pacific. An artist with quite different ideas to their own, an artist from another culture, an artist from another planet. By this time Len had had his ‘eureka’ moment while living and studying art in Wellington.  “Why try to paint movement, (as Constable attempted when painting clouds) why not just make things move?” This idea, and its association with his own body movement and dance forms from the Pacific, gave him a unique (kine)aesthetic to making art.  We see this best in his experimental films and moving sculptures. 
 
Unsurprisingly, Len was invited to exhibit in the ‘International Surrealist Exhibition at the New Burlington Galleries in Mayfair in 1936.  The catalogue lists his works as; ‘The Jam Session’ (oil painting), ‘Self Planting at Night’ (photogram) and ‘Marks and Spencer in a Japanese Garden’ (photogram).  There are similarities between Len’s ideas and those of the early Surrealists.  Both were fascinated with the art of other cultures; both used forms of the ‘unconscious’ in their work, and both had an interest in the shapes that occur in ‘nature. For example, Joan Miro’s biomorphic imagery is akin to the “cellular’ forms in Len’s drawings, paintings, batiks, films, and sculptures.  But Len was not a ‘card-carrying’ member of the Surrealist Movement.  He was not particularly interested in their political aims, and moreover, he was intent on pursuing his own ideas on ‘movement’. 
 
The exhibition ‘Surrealism Beyond Borders’ is a comprehensive and re-interpretation of Surrealism.  It is a joint effort between the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Tate Modern in London.  The exhibition opened at the Met on February 24 and will run until August 29 at the Tate Modern.   
 
Len’s film Tusalava is included in both.  The exhibition is accompanied by an excellent book co-edited by Stephanie D’Alessandro and Matthew Gale, and includes texts from over 50 authors. (See Raymond Spiteri’s essay ‘Alternative Orders, page 280 in ‘Surrealism Beyond Borders’ where he writes about Len and Gordon Walters).  There are some glowing reviews: “The variety of discoveries, detailed with exceptional scholarship in a ravishing keeper of a catalogue, defeat generalization.”—Peter Schjeldahl, New Yorker 
 
Len completed Tusalava, his first film, in 1929 - an animation made up of over 4400 drawings, carefully registered and photographed with a Rostrum camera. It took Len nearly two years, to produce the nine-minute film with sponsorship from the London Film Society.  Sound tracks were not common on films back then and his friend, Jack Ellitt, composed music for two pianos that played live at the premiere in December 1929 at the London Film Society.  Unfortunately, the Elliott music score is lost and Tusalava is mostly exhibited now as a ‘silent’ movie. 
 
Although Tusalava is made using relatively conventional techniques – thousands of drawings with slight variations between them were photographed in sequence to produce an animation – the protagonists and themes of the film are far from conventional.  Len struggled to explain his film.  He once said; “When I was a kid, a lot of disturbing things happened around me.  But… happiness became my whole theory of life” (see Roger Horrocks’, ‘Len Lye: a biography’, page 92). In Tusalava, a menacing octopus like figure devours a ‘robot’ and then gives it new life.  Perhaps Tusalava provided cathartic relief for Len.  The protagonist figure is based on the Australian Aborigine Witchetty grub – a venerated emblem of the Arrernte people of Central Australia.  While menacing, it appears to give perpetual life to those around it.  And the title, Tusa lava is a Samoan phrase meaning ‘just the same’ or perhaps, ‘the circle of life’.    
 
Tusalava flows with Surrealist themes – emblems and images from different cultures, the unconscious or the ‘dream world’ and organic cellular shapes that morph and change throughout the film. Tusalava was a deeply personal film for Len, a film about overcoming anxiety and fear; a film that may later have inspired Individual Happiness Now – Len’s philosophy for a good and peaceful world.