Often it seems like we make the landscape. We move things, build and plant. But i feel it makes us, moves us, holds us, reveals us to ourselves.

Bio

My work explores my connection to the place where I live and my concern over habitat loss and it's conservation. In the process of wandering in, collecting and building things from nature, my experience is that there is a gradual unravelling of the unconscious mind to reveal some deeper awareness and self-understanding.

The sculptures in this last body of work, Wandering in Landscape and Memory, are made from earth, wood and rope. I mix the earth with my feet. I collect different coloured clays from around the shire, but mostly I like to use the clay from the land around my home, which sits beneath the cliffs along Mullumbimby Creek. Above us is Koonyum Range. Here I find pale yellow and white clay. Clay holds memory. It holds the vibration of everyone that’s walked here, the animals, fires and floods. It feels precious and sacred. In the early mornings, my boys and I collect treasures from along our dirt driveway. We wander. We find sticks, birds’ nests, rocks and clay. Deep purple, red and occasionally black. We make piles as we go and sometimes I remember to collect them. Otherwise they remain as ephemeral markers of this brief moment in our lives.

The word wander has a certain pace: it is an invitation for wonder. It’s the pace of a toddler. Together we hunch down to admire the busyness of some ants, only to be startled into silence by the screeching soaring black cockatoos or the eerie howl of a dingo echoing off the cliffs. We watch my eldest as he leaps from rock to rock, avoiding the wobbly one, and somehow, the coiled brown snake beneath it. He’s now so familiar with this landscape. It has grown him, this topography. He’s strong, lean, agile and brave. I wonder what he will remember when he's old. The ancient cliffs and their secret caves, the big grey boulders, the giant fig, the sweet water or the abundant harvest. Sometimes it seems like we make the landscape. We move things, build and plant. But I think it makes us, moves us, holds us, reveals us to ourselves.

There is somewhere between understanding the brutal indifference of nature, the potential for death at any moment. And the raw wild beauty and those humble crouching moments. There’s somewhere in there like the space between notes that reveals our infinite nature and yet these moments are all we have and the wonder of that.