Lost in Space
Swarm 2025 mixed media collage on postcard
Somedays I find myself completely lost for words. I’m retelling a story and can’t remember a vital piece of information or a person’s name. I start saying “you know, the thingmy jig” or “what’s it’s name” which is OK when you’re with close friends or family but not so good when you’re out shopping.
I think I have been getting slightly lost in space, seduced by the stories on social media that draw you into their alternative realities. Minutes drift into an hour and I can’t remember what I picked up my phone to look at in the first place.
I used to wonder what people were doing looking at their phones all the time. Now I know. It’s an addiction. What’s worse is it all seems so mesmerising when you’re watch 30 second clips from a comedy show or celebrity interview. Then when you finally glance up from your phone, you can’t remember anything at all about what you just watched. It’s like total erasure.
I once wrote a blogpost about getting a subscription to Netflix as a ‘gift of addiction’. Perhaps it started when I got Covid in London and couldn’t move or go out for ten days. There was nothing to read in the house so I took a subscription to Netflix and watched TV serials, episode after episode.
Last year when I had my knee replacement surgery I bought a subscription to Britbox when it was on special. Which was OK for while as well. I realise though these really feed my addictive nature and I spend my nights watching British crime dramas.
I think of the way social media has connected us over the past ten years. All those Facebook groups I instigated with my on-line mentoring and creativity courses. All those weekly zoom calls with people I only knew on-line who have now become good friends.
It was really wonderful for a few years. I made great connections with people across Australia and the world. I must have been thinking about exactly those connections when I made this postcard for the IAPMA Ruby Jubillee exhibition on the theme of ‘swarm’. I used a circle from an etching I did fifteen years ago when we had bees and I inked up a foundation sheet that the bees use to create their honey cells in.
When I drew a few bees in this circle, I felt happy that it captured the essence of ‘swarm’. Now when I look at it it seems presentient, like my art was revealing something about my thoughts that I needed to decode visually.
It has uncannily captured my love/hate relationship with the internet. The urge to swarm together, to connect across countries and continents, to make relationships as sweet as honey. But outside there is a forest to be explored and I am inside, where inky tree branches have become tendrils that seduce and draw me down into the darkness.
Of course I am reading a lot into this postcard. I could look at it a totally different way, like the tree branches are leading me up into the light and outside. It’s all about perspective.
It has got me thinking however about my social media addiction. Perhaps ‘swarm’ is indeed a warning. It is easy to become seduced by a ‘hive’ attitude, but what are we ‘swarming’ to? Perhaps I need to go ‘cold turkey’ with social media. Something for me to think about going into 2026.
