View from the Coast

the coming to know my patch of the earth is a conduit for coming to know the whole earth:
this work explores the idea of seeing the whole world by coming to deeply know one’s own ‘patch of the earth’… this also refers to coming to know oneself more deeply (our inner patch of the earth one might say).  As we come into better knowing of our own patch we come to realise that everything is connected to everything, and everything affects everything; nothing exists without everything else.

The work uses a diversity of materials and techniques; each material and each technique drawing into connection different aspects, known and unknown… the strange scratching at the back of your throat as you consider the recycled hardwood – as your body remembers the tree from whence it came, the colour pink — soft… a sunset, a rock, a tongue; the shimmer of copper reminding of the stone from which it was drawn; the softness of felt grown and carried in wind and rain on the back of sheep; the sense of tension holding up a square cloud with the discomfort of fish hooks… the blanket stitching sparking memory of a childhood comfort, the crumpled paper grown by tree yet something we easily discard…

falling through:
a slice lifted out of the earth (a core sample) revealed and isolated, its inside exposed with its web of connections expressed in its soft interior… yet despite the extraordinariness of the world in which we live we re failing at our role of being custodians, we ignore the intricacies of earth and her land and that it is her unfathomable complexity that allows our lives… we ignore this all too often and fall through life forgetting our obligations to life. falling through was first exhibited at my solo exhibition out of rain at Brenda May Gallery, 2014

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IAVA: Illawarra Association for the Visual Arts was started in 2011 by 14 artists, including myself, to create a support network and provide exhibition opportunities for artists is the Illawarra and South Coast, both within the Illawarra and beyond.