Installation view, MWR 2010
Photograph: John Brash
Installation view, MWR 2010
Photograph: John Brash
Installation view, MWR 2010
Photograph: John Brash
This series is a heady and heat-felt contemplation about my return to Melbourne (Australia) after about 5 years away from the country. In the adjustments we make to ourselves in our returns to, or re-arrivals to place – the decisions, thoughts and feelings which mingle so confusingly and heart-'achingly' in our assessments or re-assessments.
In a way, primarily it is about love - the ties that bind - yearning and obligation, to place and to people.
In constructing these pieces there were two poems that I was thinking upon He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven by W.B. Yeats; and I had a dove, and the sweet dove died by John Keats, a line from which lends itself as the title to this project.
In the works I quote Australian flora. And the panels of organza, for me, evoke the colours of this country, those brilliant hues that can be washed out in the stark, drenching light of our skies and then also the ghost-like softness of certain hours. Referring to my practice (the use of henna and cultural motifs) the decorations of these hanging feet are those of the Australian bush. Most of the floral designs are homage’s (quotes) to the water colours of Ellis Rowan, a Victorian naturalist and illustrator, in many ways a forerunner in the campaign and representation of Australian flora and fauna in applied arts and visual identity.
In the other panels there are the Coolabah, a ghost gum and the wait-a-while (a cane vine that grows through northern Queensland – with its spike encrusted tendrils that catch you out as you trawl through the bush). In these panels there are the lost places of this country, and the lost souls – our cultural nostalgia for a kind of heroic failure. There is the song of the swaggie, and the ghosts of those intrepid explorers who never came back. (The Coolabah I quote is the iconic tree where Burke and Wills missed the meeting point, and the hidden store of supplies.) In the contemplation of naming and place (and of the original owners of this country) there is the eternal creation, the blue skies of the dessert plains and Sydney. The 'everywhen' - the dreaming - and this speaks to all of us about the places we take or return to.
The work From this place depicts the Waratah flower. During federation it battled against the wattle to become our national flower. We take the word from the Aboriginal Eora language group. The word Eora (Iora, Iyora) literally translates as "Here" or “From this place”. When Europeans first encountered the local people around Botany Bay; questioning who they were they commonly replied Eora – from this place.
...Beloved as they are, from this place, they hang here, Myrtle, Jasmine, and many more... (which reminds me also of two novels by Toni Morrison Beloved and Love)
*Read what Dan had to say in his weekend column "Around the Galleries"
Wild Jasmine
nylon organza, cotton thread, glass beads 150 x 100 cm (approx)
Photograph: John Brash
Ghost gum
nylon organza, cotton thread, glass beads, sequins 150 x 100 cm (approx)
Photograph: John Brash
Under your shade
nylon organza, cotton thread, glass beads, sequins 150 x 100 cm (approx)
Photograph: John Brash
Drooping mistletoe
nylon organza, cotton thread, glass beads 150 x 100 cm (approx)
Photograph: John Brash
From this place
nylon organza, cotton thread, glass beads 150 x 100 cm (approx)
Photograph: John Brash
Wait-a-while
nylon organza, cotton thread, glass beads 150 x 100 cm (approx)
Photograph: John Brash
Dreaming the everywhen
nylon organza, cotton thread, glass beads, sequins 150 x 100 cm (approx)
Photograph: John Brash
Red bush Myrtle
nylon organza, cotton thread, glass beads 150 x 100 cm (approx)
Photograph: John Brash
*Read what Dan had to say in his weekend column "Around the Galleries"
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