Since beginning as an artist member of the Ferny Hills Painter’s Group convened by artist educator Audrey Kelk, the Northside Creative Artists Association in Brisbane and the Brisbane School of Art with artist educator Irene Amos in 1977 and 1978 its almost 43 years now that I have been involved with artist collectives and groups in Australia and overseas.
From March 2018 until November 2019 I had the pleasure to be involved with two local Canaipa artist collectives; ‘Canaipa Mudlines’ and ‘Trica Dobson’s Weaving Circles’ . These two groups include local artists who focus on and feature personal and collaborative creative responses to art and ecology in the SMBI [Southern Moreton Bay Islands] region on Quandamooka country.
‘Field Notes – Walking Meditation’, is part of the ‘Tidal Meditations’ series of video and sound works. This particular work was made as a response to the Canaipa Mudlines site generated residency in May 2019 at Deenbilla Bay and is imagined as a queer walking meditation composition. It draws on my earlier art and ecology work where personal walking meditations are performed as a way to contemplate and reflect on the impermanence of life.
We acknowledge the Quandamooka People as the traditional custodians of the lands in which we live, make and work where sovereignty was never ceded. We pay respects to their elders and their youth, past, present and emerging – and stand in sovereignty with the Uluru Statement from the Heart and their ongoing resistance against colonisation.
Mental Illness and diffability are key themes in my personal life and my creative practice. In 2014 and 2015 I collaborated on this photo media work with artists Angelina Martinez and David Corby. Exploring self-injury in an art-based approach to cultivating empathy, understanding and mindfulness this work used the flower of life motif, a geometric pattern of overlapping circles as a metaphor for self-transformation. The scars used in the work are the spiralling leaf scars from the ancient pandanus tree, the species Pandanus tectorius. This work is conceptualised as a nod to Sophie Calle’s work, ‘Take Care of Yourself ‘ (2007) . It forms part of series of my autobiographical photo media works which represent queer relationships, break-ups, correspondences, health and well-being, anxiety, social phobia, depression and PTSD as subjects for art making as a re-authoring narrative form. This recent series builds out from a 1995 documentary work titled: ‘Engaged’ a queer video art work about men who have sex with men during the HIV AIDs pandemic.
Making ephemeral works has been on ongoing theme in my art practice. Working in many ephemeral artist-run spaces in Brisbane’s artist-run ecology in the 1980s during a time of widespread demolition and gentrification had a significant impact on my making and exhibition approach. During this time the traditional ‘white cube’ model became less of a focus in my practice and an increased interest in ephemeral art, a work of art that only lasts for a fleeting amount of time, perhaps occurring once, and that can be embodied in a lasting object or not at all continues to enervate my making. This ephemeral nature of art work is part of my feeling and experience of queer temporalities, where so much creative work produced by queer artists throughout time has been fleeting. My experience of the lives and works of queer artists during the HIV AIDs pandemic were also fleeting much like the vivid mandalas that are painstakingly made and then swept ceremoniously into the ocean. Being queer in my direct lived experience continues to console me and to grow my mindfulness about the impermanence of life.
My ancestors come from the United Kingdom and other places around the globe. As children growing up in Eveleigh Street, Arana Hills in Brisbane Meeanjin my siblings and I were fortunate to experience these Quandamooka skies, lands and waters throughout the late 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s as our parents had a small boat for adventuring, camping and nature walking. For me it was a foundational time for a young artist making ephemeral art along the tidelines, in the sand dunes and tea tree swamps.
I am thrilled and delighted to be living and working in this spiritual place in 2018. During March 2018 to November 2019 I was involved in a small way with two local artist groups named ‘Canaipa Mudlines’ and ‘Tricia Dobson’s Weaving Circles’ . It was a beneficial collaborative experience for me and opened up my studio practice again into the ecosystem of Canaipa. According to one source the name Canaipa was collected from Yugambeh people[and identified as a Yugambeh-Bundjalung language word from the Ngaraangbal dialect spoken by the Pimpama clan meaning place of ironbark spear/digging stick, the name is used by both the Quandamooka and Yugambeh people, who assert traditional ownership.
During that recent and intensive time of excursions, picnics and residencies I was reacquainted with the power, play and beauty of mud, local clays, wet sand and dry sand. It reignited my passion and enthusiasm for ephemeral environmental art making. It was during these recent experiences, reflecting in reveries while sitting and making on country that I wrote these words about the affective contours of my art practice today, ” …mud is possibility, mud is an ecosystem, as a queer artist mudlining offers transmutation, a way of transforming trauma, grief, loss, bullying, homophobic violence and mudslinging into poetry” …
We acknowledge the Quandamooka People as the traditional custodians of the lands in which we live, make and work where sovereignty was never ceded. We pay respects to their elders and their youth, past, present and emerging – and stand in sovereignty with the Uluru Statement from the Heart and their ongoing resistance against colonisation.
Established in June 2018 on Canaipa [Russell Island, QLD] this new artist studio builds out from earlier artist-run studios created by interdisciplinary artist, curator, writer and researcher Paul William Andrew. Artist studios including Jedda Studios [Ballina, NSW 2013-2018], Black Glossies Studios [Katoomba, NSW 2012-2013], Newport Studios [Williamstown, VIC 2008-2012] , St Kilda Studios [St Kilda, VIC 1999-2005], Enmore Darlinghurst Bondi North Studios [ Sydney, NSW 1989-1999 ], AXIS Clinton Street Studios [New York City, USA 1988], London Studios [London, UK 1984 & 1988], That Space Studios [Brisbane, QLD 1985-1988] , Arana Hills Studios [Brisbane, QLD 1964-1984]
“ We acknowledge the Quandamooka People as the traditional custodians of the lands in which we live, make and work where sovereignty was never ceded. We pay respects to their elders and their youth, past, present and emerging – and stand in sovereignty with the ULURU STATEMENT FROM THE HEART and their ongoing resistance against colonisation.”
