Sandbagged

Sandbags have a particular resonance with me. In February 2017 my art studio in South Murwillumbah was flooded in the aftermath of ex-tropical cyclone Debbie. My daughter and granddaughter lived upstairs above the studio and were forced to evacuate by rescue boat as the waters rose higher.

Floods, fires and climate crisis have become the themes of my artworks since that time. Melting glaciers, avalanche landslides and coastal erosion from high tide storm surges have also featured. It’s like the art of disaster!

Now I am making art with sandbags which survived the floods of 2022 when my house on the coast narrowly escaped flood waters on the street. It’s been three years since that event and now the threat of flooding has increased with the advent of Cyclone Alfred.

As I write this we are waiting for the cyclone to reach landfall. Many areas in the district are already without power. Trees are down, the creek is rising. Disaster could happen any time now. It’s a waiting game. So my blog post is being written while I still have power and internet.

The news cycles are filled with doom, gloom and fear. It has held me in its vice of paralysis. No creative work, too much movie watching and mindlessly scrolling social media. I had to break the cycle.

What better way to do that than with finishing off my sandbag pieces which have stalled in their resolution. I unearthed the four of them. I had started stitching one of them in red not long after my knee operation last year. The stitches were angry and I could feel that anger seeping through.

I needed calm in the midst of the cyclonic turmoil all around. I asked advice online and was advised to unpick the red stitching which had stalled its completion. That sage advice was all I needed to get going again. Once unpicked the piece became a clean slate ready to receive new energy.

I loved the unpicked threads sticking up. All they needed was to be glued down in place. This became the first sandbag artwork finished. When I took a photo of it I realised it looked like a flotilla of boats, rescue boats from that first 2017 flood. I had a title!

Three more sandbag artworks to go. I started with the second one, realising that I was experiencing the same feeling that I had experienced when I created the artworks for my Deluge exhibition; stitching flood-marked papers together to create a narrative of hope and resilience.

Stitching as healing. I darned the little lattices of exposd hessian. They reminded me of the lattices of Islamic architecture , of the harems where women lived, their faces unseen.The shape was like an upturned teardrop, and the title presented itself as Aftermath.

The next sandbagged artwork with its circular ‘walking’ stitches was about the waiting, this in-between time as we ‘walk around in circles’ not knowing what to do next until Alfred arrives. It became Waiting for Alfred. Now I am working on Surge, hoping that the storm surge which is predicted will be gentle with us.

The act of stitching has stilled my mind, resolved my artworks and given me new creative inspiration for another project. I know that starting somewhere, anywhere, creates its own momentum. All I had to do was thread a needle and begin.

Aftermath 2025. Paperpulp, mud, ink, paper and stitching on hessian sandbag.

Surge (work in progress) 2025. Paperpulp, mud, ink, paper and stitching on hessian sandbag.