Based in the worlds of art and academia, Between the Streetlight and the Moon explores Australia’s fraught relationship with the cultural centres of London and Paris. The piece unearths wider themes of creativity, love, failure and how artists’ thoughts make or break their practice. It also questions why most of us settle for the streetlight instead of aiming for the moon.
Zadie is writing a book that’s going to blow the international art world apart... or so she’s been telling everyone for nine years. She claims her book will prove once and for all that an illicit affair between Belle Epoque artists Eduoard Manet and Berthe Morisot actually occurred. There’s only one problem - she can’t find the letter that proves her theory; and she happens to be the only academic who believes this letter exists. Obsessed with what she believes to be a 'perfect' love affair between two dead artists, one that she has largely been able to chart through a series of 11 intimate, fraught and exposing portraits, Zadie has buried herself in papers, archives, dossiers and letters to the point where her grip on reality is becoming uncertain.