Refraction of Varnished Thought Series #1

Ripped.
Suddenly, from a quasi-translucent slumber, by the bleat of an empty train, hurtling into the distance and slicing through the thick, stale, preparatory air. A slashing that leaves the minute tears of dew, the occupants of fine, chromatic lime saplings, to tremble in its wake.
One gazes at the disc of superseding luminescence, that permits a sharp piercing to the far end of the eye and facilitates the persistent disruption to a tugging ephemeral sleep.
Blindness encompasses, allowing for the insignificance of soft, finite particles to be made evident and mystfied into monumental form under the guise of beams and pools of light.
These gleaming petals shine only now, within this moment, they become acknowledged along with their overwhelming juxtaposition to the rich, all enveloping burnt sienna rain that wells simultaneously in the deep furrow of my collarbone whilst dripping from her longing and engorged fingertips.
#1

Forest Collective

Fortuately, one of my closest friends, is Evan Lawson, an extremely talented Composer, earlier in the year he decided to direct a little group of Melboune-based Musicians and Artists who would soon become known as Forest Collective. I have been affiliated with the group as photographer and artist, focussing on concepts, the production of graphic score and also performance art.

The group serves to facilitate music/art based interactive performances which covey a magic alike no other, whilst acknowledging the importance of audience inclusion. The first time, I witnessed Forest Collective in action was at Guilford Lane Gallery in the Melbourne cbd, the one word that did and will continue to be directly associated with this group in my mind is electric. And three things that any audience member will be guarenteed to experience at a Forest Collective gig, are awe - of the amazing talent and creativity that is occurring before them but more importantly amazement - that somehow their life has lead them to be included in this one of kind experience- a performance that will never occur in the exact same manner again and lastly, a sense of thankfulness- thankfulness of the fact that they were allowed in on this small yet, monumental secret.

So, thank-you Forest Collective.

Swallow

Auto-portraits.

Over the last two years my practice has become significantly focussed on wearable and kinetic pieces, these pieces are usually conceived through a hand-craft base, for example knitting or felting, each piece is derived from a different source, and attempt to convey varied concepts. Recently, Katelyn Rew of NMIT photographed, myself and Karl modelling some of my wearable pieces, originally meant as product shots, the images later assumed an aspect of self-portraiture.

Consider Preserved.

Love is
A door slammed
A window wide open
The squeal of melting rubber
The deep crunch of impact
Metal on metal
Flesh on flesh
The first glimpse
Of sunrise
Silhouette on cold street corner
An earthquake
Cold sweat in the night
A welling in your throat
A gold ring
An itch under your skin
Sipping your brilliantine
A weeping wound
The warmth of home
The ache of nostalgia
The cracking of thunder
Wet grass and fallen leaves
The gasp before the scream
Delicate filigree
A streetlamp turned off
An amputation
Forgetfulness
Emptiness
Loneliness
And surrender.

Love throws us into ‘the unknown’, it embodies all of our hopefulness and depletes the emptiness we daily ignore.
Perfumed by loneliness we embark upon a quest, seeking love in order to render ourselves ‘whole’ and potentially shatter ourselves into splintered pieces of our former identities.
We reconstruct ourselves, through melancholy and darkness to profess to the world around us never again with fervor like no other.
Yet, again we rise. For “in love we become strong, all-conquering and victorious, yet in love we are defenseless, unguarded and exposed.”
We supersede isolation and the “unbearable separateness” of human kind, thereby “offering ourselves up for sacrifice”.
Our identities become disfigured and now our desire is only for the acquisition of a balance between autonomy and dependence, which is “perhaps the most difficult challenge we face in life”, “Love is as close as we can get to the sublime in our everyday lives”, it is our definition of beauty; it blossoms as a flower and rots as a fruit. It is organic and therefore, inherently within us.
For it is in love that we are found and in love that we become lost.
*All quotes from‘A Labour of Love’ article written by Nan Goldin, featured in Acne Paper no.7, pp. 106-107.

The above images are from an installation from earlier in the year, the piece was a form of expression in order to convey a segregation of my being- an emotional amputation of sorts. Through the use of a site-specific space, materials often used to preserve food, a hand bound intimate-scale book and poem, and a whole heap of smashed gin bottles, (in order to comment upon the substance abuse nature of courting within Australia) I hoped to divulge my experiences with love, and the acknowledgment of the need to preserve the most significant memories, ones which we often disregard and later find to be instrumental in the construction of our selves.

#5
Importunate memory.
Tugging eternally in the deep space beneath mind. Cramped in a single bed, covered in dirt, speckles of green grass imprinted on pink fleeced knees.
The old farmhouse creaks and drafts imbue every corner of every room.
Fingertips of ice, purple from the winter engulfing the house on the hill.
A supermarket bought storybook is brought to life with his voice.
She stares up, fascinated by the golden gilded binding.
The apple tree shivers in an unrelenting wind.

Beach Combing

Most of my childhood memories revolve somehow around the beach, swimming in the ocean, the stink of seaweed, beach combing for shells, the luminescent white of washed up cuttlefish, rockpooling, spying on crabs, sunbaking til sunset on gigantic rock formations and of course, the nostalgic smell of aloe vera after-sun spray. The majority of these memories occurred on a strip of beaches at Cape Paterson Victoria, which is within 15km of the planned location for a desalination plant.

I'm definately not an environmental scientist, but it has been contested that the introduction of the plant will cause some, if not monumental damage to the coastline, and it's inhabitants. Recently I took a trip down to the coast and took a series of images in order to preserve some of the aforementioned memories, the images were abstracted close-ups, and the final products convey a post-apocolyptic air, a coincidental and poignant effect.

Daylesford

In June of this year Karl decided to semi-surprise me with a week away at a bed and breakfast in Daylesford, Vic, we stayed at a place called Breakneck Gorge, that boasted 360 degree views and a hobby farm including turkeys and shetland ponies! I took some images around the property, literally just as a storm rolled in, using a roll of colour film that I had found in my dad's camera case- judging by the packaging it was about a decade out of date. The effects acheived were a grainy, subdued colour and when coupled with the low lighting of dusk, the images assume an aged quality reminiscent to the film.

Bathroom Village

The house that I spent most of my angst-infested adolescence in was a rickety little miner's cottage, in a Victorian coastal town, it was the first house my mother had ever bought on her own, and I presume, because of a lack of funding, and a proliferation of sample-colour paint pots we decided to paint practically every wall, cornice and border a different colour, the effect was dramatic, but beautfiul none-the-less. Despite the amazingly elaborate garden my mother some how acheived, the house needed re-stumping and the floor resembled something out of Bettlejuice, with slopes and waves like the ocean.
These oddly placed, literal gaps, in the flooring enabled a wealth of funghi to develop in my bathroom. At the time, I'm sure that I reacted in a rather aggressive manner to this new company to my morning shower, but in hindsight, its existence was one of the things I remember most about the house. Therefore, I produced this initial piece, and later a larger series of modrock figurines, adorned with glitter and metallic spray paints, they barely resemble that funghi from many years ago, but alas these are my homage.