It’s the 11th September 2021 and the annual outdoor sculpture show Swell at Currumbin Beach is in full swing. We are arriving just as the sun is going down. There are people promenading down the beach with the giant blow up white rabbits, a thousand paper cranes blowing in the wind, the grand, the simple, the bizarre and the intriguing. Swell is Queensland’s answer to Sculpture by the Sea at Bondi. Luckier this year to be able to host the event whereas Covid restrictions in Sydney have closed Sculpture by the Sea for the second year running.
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space means a lot to me
Space means a lot to me
6.30 am Stingray Creek
In 2010 I completed a Masters in Contemporary Art through the University of Tasmania. I developed a large body of works that looked at the history of the region I live in and also a research thesis on Placemaking and how to make more compassionate places.
What I found is, though we may be passionate about the places we call home, we rarely understand the multiple layers that make up the heritage, environment and culture of our places. We fail to see our place in the ecology of life or the responsibilities we have as custodians of the places we call home.
Australia Day 2010 I asked the people attending a friends Australia Day lunch what Australia meant to them. At the table were Fijians, Dutch, German, Irish and English Australians.
I used some of their quotes in a work I called Diaspora. This work took the conversations about being Australian and the stories I collected from our region on where people had come from and stitched them together in my interpretation of a songline. We are all part of the songlines of this country no matter where we come from - we just need to stitch us and the world together not apart.
In a 2017 exhibition held at the Centre Beaudesert we asked artists from across Australia to contemplate and respond to the theme of the exhibition Caring for Country. ( see link to the works by Elizabeth Poole) Overall the works that we exhibited did not lean towards imagining a world with green walls and solar powered vehicles as I expected might be the case but overwhelmingly focused on slowing down and listening to nature and our place in it.
This was also the message from the First Nations at the recent Arts Ablaze Conference
Today I am on holidays, a road trip- taking some time out to slow down and listen to nature. We have been camped by the bend of a river. Under the shadow of a mountain. I can see evidence that the trees that adorn the mountain are dry and stressed. The night sunset glows through the haze of nearby bush fires. The National Parks are closed and smouldering.
Where I live is a region Arthur Groom called The Scenic Rim- mountain ranges that formed 20 and 23 million years ago as Gondwana moved over hot spots beneath the earths crust. Arthur was the founder of Australia National Parks movement and established Binna Burra Lodge in the heart of World Heritage Listed Rainforest- 8 weeks ago burnt to the ground. Right across my region, across Queensland, News South Wales in fact much of Australia, fires are now burning. This too becomes an opportunity to see, become aware and adapt for the future.
Here at the bend of the river the nearby bushfires turn the sunset more resplendent than ever but on sunrise it is a new day.
Nature is the greatest healer.
Do I travel this world collecting picture postcard impressions of life or tune into the stories of our past in order to be more present and make a future for tomorrow?
Today we leave for Canberra- our nations Capital!
