In the repurposed fish packing shed at the Nes artist residency in Skagaströnd, Iceland in 2019.
Why go on artist residencies? While you need a proposal to submit with your residency application, the work you make might completely go off on a tangent. I’ve learnt the best thing is to stay flexile and adapt to your new surroundings.
Read More
Daily artwork ink on paper (detail)
Creativity is a blessing. It takes you outside of yourself to a place that is “out of time”. It is akin to connection with something greater, the divine, the universal life force.
Read More
24th July (detail) 2021
The history of art is full of artist activists. Art can “spur thinking, engagement, and even action”. It can not only bear witness to events, but can move us to hope in the midst of despair. Hope for freedom, hope for action, hope for equality and justice in the midst of the ensuing world chaos that can threaten to overwhelm us.
Read More
Waterholes, woven paper artist book, (work in progress 2021)
A little bit wonky is a good thing in art, it frees you from perfectionism. When it comes to repurposing old artworks, the courage it takes to tear up or paint over the old, is worth it. Old and boring transforms into wild, wonky and unique.
Read More
Les tres riches heures du Duc de Berry Fevrier (February), detail
When you are at home is self-isolation, how do you mark time? In the Middle Ages the marking of time was both cosmological and seasonal. Can we turn crisis into opportunity and document our days with creative activity?
Read More
Me & BJ, our Clydesdale horse, 1984.
There have been scary moments in my life when I came close to catastrophe. Like when we were travelling in our horse and wagon and disaster nearly struck. That was when I learned a very hard won truth. I had to surrender and hand over the reins.
Read More
Work in Progress - stitched collage for inclusion in my upcoming Occupy exhibition 13-19th August
Rebellious daughters. We did everything we could to avoid the “domestic arts” and all they represented. Transforming a legacy of domestic skills into unapologetic art.
Read More
Syntagma Square, Athens, 2011.
Occupy is a powerful word. Ten years ago it was a rallying call for people in over 900 cities worldwide to protest against wealth inequality. Occupy is also the title of my forthcoming joint art exhibition and art workshops in Murwillumbah in August. Both are narratives of human habitation and occupation.
Read More
Finding your true north could be as simple as tearing up the maps that define borders and map our connections to each other instead.
Read More
Vincent Namatjira in front of his Archibald prize winning painting Stand Strong for Who You Are, 2020.
What is the purpose of art? Is is it to be pretty or to challenge our notions of who we are at the deepest level? Today is the start of NAIDOC week and we are called to have a “deep challenging national story” around how our Indigenous art and artists can lead the way we see ourselves as Australians.
Read More