OUTPUT Art after Fire: A Folio provides an insight into the work of ten visual artists and creative writers who have faced and addressed the wild ...
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OUTPUT Art after Fire: A Folio provides an insight
Katherine Boland Crime Scene (detail) 2021 Acrylic, scorching on timber
into the work of ten visual artists and creative writers
who have faced and addressed the wild fires that
devastated southeast Australia and western United
States of America in 2019-20.
Electing to participate in the international pilot
project, OUTPUT Art after Fire, artists Alice Ansara,
Karen Sedaitis, Karyn Thompson, Katherine Boland,
Lee Grant and Rhonda Ayliffe from Australia together
with Cara Despain, Kelly Ramsey, Emily Schlickman
and Daniela Naomi Molnar from the United States
have generated new work arising from their personal
experiences augmented by remote engagement with
OUTPUT
selected mentors who are knowledgeable in creative
art field research techniques. The Project mentors are:
Art after Fire:
Kate Cole-Adams, Caren Florance and Heather Burness A Folio
(AUS); Erika Osborne and Richard Saxton (USA).
This publication is a showcase of the new work the
artists have made and is intended for distribution in
the artists’ respective communities or, as an electronic
file, anywhere in the world.
OUTPUT Art after Fire is a bilateral, international
pilot project facilitated jointly by South East Arts and
FieldScreen International. The project was supported
financially by the Australian Government Department
of Foreign Affairs and Trade under the Australian
Cultural Diplomacy Grant Program.
OUTPUT
OUTPUT
Emily Schlickman Distilling the Pyrocene II 2021 Digital Print 142 x 106cm
Art after Fire:
A Folio
South East Arts / FieldScreen Inter natio nal
June 2021
A CKNOWLEDGEMENTS
OUTPUT Art after Fire is a project Field Research Techniques: Mr John Reid,
Cara Despain It doesn’t look like paradise anymore (Camp Fire) 2019-20
managed by South East Arts and Assoc Prof Erika Osborne, Ms Heather
supported financially by the Australian Burness, Assoc Prof Richard Saxton, Ms
Government Department of Foreign Kate Cole-Adams, Dr Caren Florence
Affairs and Trade Australian Cultural
Diplomacy Grant Program. Project participation by Heather Burness,
Katherine Boland and Karyn Thompson
funded by South East Arts
Project Team
Dr Johanna Hoyne, Dr Amanda Stuart, Mr
Andrew Gray, Ms Amelia Zaraftis, Prof Bill OUTPUT Art after Fire: A Folio
Carbon residue from burnt debris 244 x 426cm
Gilbert, Prof Yoshimi Hayashi, Mr John
Reid, Mr Charles Tambiah, Ms Heike Qualitz First published in 2021 by South East Arts
Administering Organisation PO Box 577, Bega 2550, NSW, Australia
South East Arts (NSW) Inc Contact: Mr Andrew Gray, Executive Director
agray@southeastarts.org.au
Project Facilitation
© South East Arts
South East Arts: Andrew Gray
Copyright for the visual artwork and creative
FieldScreen International: John Reid
writing in this folio is retained by the artists
Project Webinars
Editorial: Johanna Hoyne, John Reid,
Host: Monica Davidson, Creative Plus Business Andrew Gray
How do people respond to natural disasters Project Evaluation: Charles Tambiah
and emergency events, at the time and Folio Design: Heike Qualitz
over the long term?: Dr Margaret Moreton,
Principal, Leva Consulting For more information: www.artafterfire.com.au
iv v
C ONTENTS
Lee Grant All the world is here (Opened concertina book) 2021
2 Project Background /
Mentors and Artists
14 Cara Despain
18 Rhonda Ayliffe
22 Alice Ansara
26 Kelly Ramsey
30 Emily Schlickman
15 x 21cm closed, 385 x 21cm open
34 Karen Sedaitis
38 Lee Grant
42 Daniela Naomi
48 Katherine Boland
52 Karyn Thompson
56 Project Evaluation
62 Future Aspirations
64 Epilogue
vi
P ROJECT BACKGROUND /
MENTORS AND ARTISTS
OUTPUT Art after Fire arose from the Stuart who brought South East Arts provision of funds to promote new artwork call from South East Arts for Expressions of
desire of artists to help artists whose Executive Director, Andrew Gray, into the (75% of grant directly to artists); and the Interest (EoI) to participate in the project.
creative practice was severely disrupted picture with his reach into fire affected project’s capacity for a grounded historical Every EoI made compelling reading. Artists
by the wild bush fires that swept southeast communities; and artist Hanna Hoyne who, account of unprecedented environmental were invited to make a choice of 3 mentors
New South Wales, Australia, and the having identified the Australian Cultural destruction by fire. with whom they would like to work from a
western regions of the United States of Diplomacy Grant Program (ACDGP) as New work for potential exhibition in FI prospectus of mentor curricula vitae.
America in 2019-20. The disaster was a funding body for bush fire themed the artists’ communities would be the main Constrained by the budget, yet made
compounded by the COVID19 pandemic applications, gathered a working party. project output equally matched by a project possible by contributions of labour from
that intensified for all the isolation and Contact was made with artist colleagues publication, OUTPUT Art after Fire: A Folio, mentors and partners that exceeded
the diminution of access to social or in the United States: Bill Gilbert (NM); for international electronic distribution. project recompense, 10 artists were
environmental healing. Yoshimi Hayashi (CA); Erika Osborne (CO); Charles Tambiah, an independent project selected by a panel drawn from the Project
Support was immediately provided by Ryan Henel (NM); and Ryan Pierce (OR) to evaluator, would assess the project to Team to join the project in mixed country
artists who were materially unaffected by explore international involvement. guide an expanded and enduring iteration and disciplinary pairs with a mentor from
the crisis such as contributions of artwork Good news came in August 2020. in the future founded on participant either the United States or Australia.
to benefit-exhibitions and cash to relief AUD 30,000 had been granted under feedback about their pilot experience. Satisfyingly, selected artists were paired
agencies. To complement this, John Reid the ACDGP sufficient for a one-year Accomplished graphic artist and sculptor, with a preferred mentor. Work began in
established FieldScreen International (FI) pilot project to proceed as envisaged. Heike Qualitz, in Berlin, would design the earnest from January to May 2021 with
in March 2020 offering artist expertise. Excitement on both sides of the Pacific project publication. intermittent work-in-progress Zoom
Conceived as an online, international centred around: the international sharing By October 2020 under the banner of sessions with mentors that followed
mentoring network, FI would offer to of artist experiences; the reinvigoration FI, 44 visual artists and creative writers from two preparatory project webinars on
artists impacted by fire related trauma of networks and the establishment of new the United States and Australia accepted a trauma sensitivity and field research
collegiality, empathetic focus, and field- ones; insights to be gained into various request to offer their expertise as mentors techniques, delivered in December 2020,
based methodologies to scaffold new modus operandi for creative responses to experienced in field research techniques to which all 44 mentors and 33 artists Lee Grant
work about their experiences. place; the combined power of visual image to artists who might benefit from collegial were invited. OUTPUT Art after Fire: A Psychoterratica
In April 2020, an opportunity to realise and creative text to instigate emotional assistance to regain the momentum of their Folio delivers an insight into the project’s (Cover) 2021. Zine 4
this initiative came from the combined reflection as a precursor to shared creative practice. 33 fire affected creative pilot methodology and the extraordinary Other Landscapes
intel of artists Amelia Zaraftis and Amanda understanding and concerted action; the artists from both countries responded to a artwork it generated. 15 x 21cm
2 3
RICHARD SAXTON C A R A D E S PA I N R H O N D A AY L I F F E
MENTOR Richard Saxton is an artist, designer, and
educator whose work focuses primarily
RICHARD SAXTON (USA) on rural knowledge and landscape.
Saxton’s work is conceived through an
Visual Artist & Writer interdisciplinary cultural framework and can
be contextualized through social and site-
ARTISTS based art practice. Saxton’s work has been
described as contemporary vernacular,
C A R A D E S PA I N ( U S A ) non-heroic, and an art infused with rural
Visual Artist experience without subscribing to any one
genre or culture. Saxton is the founder of the
R H O N D A AY L I F F E ( A U S ) M12 Collective, an interdisciplinary group
that develops projects through dialogical
Visual Artist and collaborative approaches. M12 creates
and supports new modes of art making in
often rural and remote areas, and focuses Cara Despain is an artist working in film I was born, raised and remain in the small
on experiential practices that explore and video, sculpture, photography and community of Cobargo, Yuin Country, Far
community identity and the value of often installation addressing issues of land use and South Coast NSW. I am a process-oriented
under - represented rural communities and ownership, climate change, visualizing the artist with a mixed-discipline practice that
their surrounding landscapes. Anthropocene and toxic frontierism. She was includes books arts, photography, sculpture,
m12studio.org born in Salt Lake City, Utah and currently lives installation, collaborative and socially-
in Miami, Florida and works between the two. engaged art working. On New Year’s Eve
Taking from well-worn artistic lineages such 2019 my community was devastated by the
as landscape painting and western cinema, Badja Forest Rd firestorm. I am currently
she exploits the power of romantic images undertaking a PhD with the University of
and how notions of paradise mislead or let us Canberra, examining the capacity of creative
down. Writing, fieldwork and research play a practices to deliver practical outcomes for
major role in her work. community recovery in the aftermath of trauma.
caradespain.com rhondamayliffe.com
4 5
K AT E C O L E - A D A M S ALICE ANSARA K E L LY R A M S E Y
MENTOR Kate Cole-Adams is a Melbourne-
based writer and journalist. Her 2017
book Anaesthesia won the Mark and
K AT E C O L E - A D A M S ( A U S )
Evette Moran Nib Literary Award and was
Writer shortlisted for the 2018 Victorian Premier’s
Literary Award (non-fiction category) and
ARTISTS Melbourne Prize Best Writing Award. It is
a personal, journalistic and philosophical
ALICE ANSARA (AUS) exploration of what happens when
we go under. Her current project is
Writer
a creative non-fiction exploration of her
K E L LY R A M S E Y ( U S A ) London childhood, female friendship,
identity and the self. She is fascinated by
Writer
unconscious processes and other things
she can’t understand. She writes slowly.
katecoleadams.com Alice Ansara is an actor across film, TV, Kelly Ramsey’s writing has appeared in The
theatre and radio. She was part of the Sydney Washington Post, American Short Fiction,
Theatre Company’s Actors Ensemble and Electric Literature, and The Mississippi
there began work in script development and Review. She has an essay in the forthcoming
dramaturgy. Alice has also written poetry, anthology Letter to a Stranger (Algonquin,
co-founded the Bass Coast Poetry Slams 2021). She co-founded the artists’ residency
and was a Victorian finalist in the Australian program The Lighthouse Works, and she is a
National Poetry Slam. Since moving to the MacDowell fellow. She works as a wildland
Far South Coast, Alice has begun writing and firefighter on a hotshot crew in Northern
producing radio documentaries and podcast California.
series including the award winning The CWA kellylynnramsey.com
and the F-Word and From the Embers about
the Great Fires of 2019/2020.
nickygluyas.com.au/FemaleArtists/
6 7
ERIKA OSBORNE E M I LY S C H L I C K M A N KAREN SEDAITIS
MENTOR Erika Osborne’s artwork explores cultural
connections to place and environment. She
ERIKA OSBORNE (USA) has exhibited extensively, with over ten solo
exhibitions and 80 group exhibitions in recent
Visual Artist years - including shows at the Carnegie
Museum of Art, the Nevada Museum of
ARTISTS Art and the Chautauqua Institute. Erika
has been the recipient of numerous grants
E M I LY S C H L I C K M A N ( U S A ) and awards, including a recent Fulbright
fellowship. Erika’s work has been highlighted
Visual Artist
in numerous publications and she is also a
KAREN SEDAITIS (AUS) contributing author for books and journals
on environmental art and pedagogy. Erika is
Visual Artist
currently an Associate Professor at Colorado
State University.
erikaosborne.com Emily Schlickman is an assistant professor of Karen Sedaitis is a visual artist and fiction
landscape architecture and environmental writer living in Bega on the SE coast of NSW,
design at the University of California, Davis. currently working predominantly with paint and
Her research focuses on the intersection ink drawings. Her horticultural and Landscape
of digital representation, urban futures, Designer background has significantly
and climate change adaptation. She holds influenced her visual approach with a strong,
a Master in Landscape Architecture from lavishly detailed perspective.
Harvard Graduate School of Design and a Karen has an interest in all facets of interconnection;
Bachelor of Arts in International Studies and particularly the meshing of the natural and inner
Environmental Studies from Washington worlds through immersive experience. She has a
University in St. Louis. diverse practice concerned with the translation of
humanecology.ucdavis.edu/people/emily-schlickman an emotional tone or experience through detailed
mark-making and close observation.
karensedaitis.com
8 9
CAREN FLORANCE LEE GRANT DANIELA MOLNAR
MENTOR Caren Florance is an Australian typo-
bibliographic artist and writer. Her work
CAREN FLORANCE (AUS) is cross-disciplinary, spanning visual
arts/writing/design, and her favourite
Visual Artist & Writer medium is handset letterpress. She
exhibits and publishes solo work, but
ARTISTS also undertakes collaborative projects
with writers and other artists using
LEE GRANT (AUS) methodologies that allow skill-sharing
Visual Artist and encourages equal value to each
contribution, rather than being in
DANIELA MOLNAR (USA) service to each other.
Visual Artist & Writer carenflorance.com
Lee is a photo-artist based on the South Daniela Naomi Molnar is an artist / wilderness
Coast of NSW. She works on commissions guide / educator / activist / eternal student
and longform projects dealing with themes of working with the mediums of language,
community, identity and belonging and how image, and place to explore issues of social,
landscape (both natural and inhabited) relates political, and ecological justice. Her work aims
to these concepts. Working across media, Lee’s to shape and nurture generative new ideas,
practice combines photography, video, sound ethics, and cultural change. She founded the
and text in projects that are often underpinned Art + Ecology program at the Pacific Northwest
with institutional and found archives. Her College of Art, and is an all-around integral
practice has a strong focus on bookmaking as part of Signal Fire, providing opportunities for
an outcome, as both published and limited- artists to learn about environmental justice by
edition artist books. Lee continues to work on engaging with public wildlands. Her work has
projects in Australia, Korea and Japan. been shown nationally.
leegrant.net danielamolnar.com
10 11H E AT H E R B U R N E S S K AT H E R I N E B O L A N D KARYN THOMPSON
MENTOR Heather Burness lives and works on
the unceded land of the Yuin Nation
in the rural town of Bega in New South
H E AT H E R B U R N E S S ( A U S )
Wales, Australia. She has a Master of
Visual Artist Philosophy from the ANU School of
Art and has exhibited nationally and in
ARTISTS group exhibitions internationally. Her
work focuses on ephemeral and transient
K AT H E R I N E B O L A N D ( A U S ) phenomena and the experience of being
in ‘place and time’, the marks of water,
Visual Artist & Writer
rain, vapors and mists, shorelines, rivers,
KARYN THOMPSON (AUS) atmospheric conditions, soils and wind.
She is influenced by local First Nation
Visual Artist
knowledge, Western scientific thinking
and Abstraction.
heatherburness.com Katherine Boland lives on the Far South Karyn Thompson has a degree in Architecture
Coast of New South Wales. Seeking to distil from UCAN and a Visual Arts degree (with
classical interpretations of the beauty of the Honours) from the ANU school of Art.
natural world in an organic, abstract space, Karyn worked as an architect for 18 years,
she incorporates non-traditional media and however, since moving to the Far South
processes in her work, often using fire itself Coast (NSW), she has focused on her art
as a drawing medium. Katherine has been the career. Working in both 2D and 3D mediums,
recipient of numerous art prizes and grants, Karyn’s work seeks to explore and challenge
including the Heysen Art Prize for Interpretation perceived boundaries between conscious
of Place in 2009. She has a Graduate and subconscious worlds. She has exhibited
Diploma in Therapeutic Arts Practice and both locally and interstate, and was recently
her memoir, Hippy Days, Arabian Nights was selected as a finalist in the Wyndham (2019)
published by Wild Dingo Press in 2017. and Basil Seller’s (2020) Art Prizes.
katherineboland.com.au karynthompson.net
12 13C A R A D E S PA I N For the last two years, I’ve been collecting Western approaches to thinking, settling, burnt debris from wildfires in the western managing and exploiting vast swaths United States and using them to create of the Earth is oppositional and has “carbon paintings” that serve as markers precipitated untenable circumstances. of a changing climate and sustained forest Though I have not yet been directly mismanagement, existing in memoriam affected by loss of property or family, of the consequences of human habitation or a notion of home, as someone born on the planet. Collecting from sites such and raised in the region (Utah), fire is as the Woolsey Fire in Malibu, and the an ever- accelerating seasonal constant. Camp Fire in Paradise, California, among Tracking and conveying this change, and many others throughout the mountain chronicling the gravity of each loss with west region of the United States, each a wide lens feels important to me. The piece in the series corresponds to and valleys of the Wasatch Front trap smoke memorializes a specific fire. Using the from the entire west coast, as well as from debris as drawing tools, I saturate large- wildland fires in the state. As a cocktail Cara Despain scale canvases with pure charcoal to of displacement, development and 2020: a year in flames 2021 create overwhelming visualizations of a economy brings more and more people Multi-channel video installation, loop. large-scale systems change. The works are to settle in the mountain west, it is only Fires and source, left to right: El Dorado meant to conceptually inhabit the lineage a matter of time before the magnitude Fire, CA (OC Hawk); Troublesome Fire, of landscape painting, but represent of impact from these fires events follows. CO (CBS4 Denver); Australia Bush fires spent/wrecked vistas and places rather What happens to one happens to all, (Four Corners); Brazilian Amazon fires than pristine wilderness. The reduced, and we are easily myopic. After living (Al Jazeera); Wendy’s fire in Atlanta, fundamental material end result of these half-time in a region where the imminent GA after the death of Rayshard devastating events is the same as the threat is sea level rise (Miami) for nearly a Brooks (Bloomberg); Bobcat Fire, CA cause—carbon—and this implicates decade, communicating and connecting (OnScene.TV); police van fire after the each of us and our collective role as a causal dots at a macro-level has become death of George Floyd in New York, NY part of, not apart from, the natural world. my mission. (AFP TV); Creek Fire, CA (OnScene.TV) 14 15
left side:
Cara Despain
It doesn’t look like paradise anymore
(exhibition view) 2019
Carbon residue from burnt debris on
muslin, melted acrylic fencing
152 x 213cm, 213 x 305cm, 122 x 244cm
also see page v
Cara Despain
Erasing paradise 2020
16 17R H O N D A AY L I F F E Palinopsia - (Greek: palin for “again” and opsia for “seeing”) - the persistent recurrence of a visual image after the stimulus has been removed. Night and day all my thoughts are filled with this site: 70 Princes Hwy, Cobargo. The shop silhouette a ghostly afterimage. The debris; the months of hiatus; the weeks of clean up where big excavators and trucks came, packed up the mess that was once our town and took it away to be buried in a hole in the ground; the months of town meetings: ideas explored and discarded; the long wait for regeneration. Despair and hope intermingle daily. Rhonda Ayliffe Rhonda Ayliffe Palinopsia 1 & 6 2021 Palinopsia 2-5 2021 Laser cut clear acrylic forms with Laser cut clear acrylic forms with lights, tapes, toy charcoal, soil and ferns vehicles, discarded paper 26 x 41 x 3.5cm each 26 x 41 x 3.5cm each 18 19
I have stared at the page for the longest a style for the streetscape (a style that
time. Trying to summon words. New hasn’t always been appreciated). But it
Years Eve 2019. Badja Forest Rd Fire. was an important place for me. This old
But I don’t have the words. The noise. shop was bought by my grandparents
The smell. The fear. The grief. Over 300 and they ran the town’s general store
homes in my small region were destroyed. for over 3 decades. In the 1980s my
Over 300. And Robert and Patrick and father operated a motorcycle dealership
Ross. Funerals for friends. And the relief. here and by the 1990s it was my turn to
My family is safe. My home has survived. reinvent the space - as my studio/gallery.
Survivors guilt. It’s all too big and too On NYE this shop and shed containing
terrible to squish into this small space. all our great-grandparents strange Rhonda Ayliffe
It’s not something I want to make art keepsakes were razed to the ground, Every Building and Empty Space on the
about. I can’t. along with my father’s childhood home Main Street Cobargo 2021
next door and a huge swathe of the Laser print on various papers
In the aftermath of the fire I turned Cobargo Main Street. 21 x 13 x 1cm closed, 21 x 330cm open
all my creative energy to one site: 70
Princes Highway, Cobargo - this space In the aftermath of the Badja fire my
on the Main Street of town has been parents decided they would donate the
owned by the Ayliffe family since the shop site to the town to build something
for and with the community to lead the
Every Building and Empty Space... yet to be determined. Every Building... empty space and to create their own
early 1940s. 70 Princes Hwy Cobargo has been created as a homage to Ed was conceived not only as a discrete unique artist book using downloadable
could never be considered an overly recovery of our town’s main street. This
Rushca’s iconic 1966 artist book Every artist book made by my little hands, PDFs of my Every Building... files. These
important site - it contained a large (by is the simple genesis of the Cobargo
Bushfire Resilience Centre.
Building on the Sunset Strip. With my but also as an ongoing, open ended PDFs essentially provide the scaffold or
Cobargo standards) weatherboard shop open edition artist book I captured the space for collaboration, extending the framework for contributors to interact
and a wonky old shed at the rear. Its Above: street view pic of the shop on 70 Princes Hwy, Cobargo was the logical site. main street of my village, but presented parameters and participants of the with. All collaborators / contributors will
architecture wasn’t anything important 70 Princes Highway, 2018 Creating Art after Fire is not easy - but its the space where all our town’s historic OUTPUT project. Everyone is invited also have their creative work shared on
either - it was just distinctive enough Below: Rhonda Ayliffe sitting on the oh so necessary as it can bring hope and and quirky buildings were lost as a clean to offer artwork, images, words, ideas, a dedicated online space :
with its decorative stepped facade to set steps of the site circa 1969 healing to a traumatised community. and crisp blank slate - where the future is even lists (if that’s your thing) to fill the output-artistbook.blogspot.com
20 21A LICE ANSARA
DEPLETED
I’d carried two babies inside my body. The both of them, they sucked me dry. diagnosed with a brisk prodding of the arms around their heads in fruitless self- dragged it in on my body and it was again. If it was too dirty and they’d have
Fed them from the minerals that Not just the milk feeding, which at first region. A protrusion of my internal organs protection. I forsook my veggies; we had getting up her nose. to schedule me to come back another,
composed me. In utero, I’d sung and was through raw and bloody nipples, and tissues, strained and stretched from no water to spare. Like a guilt ridden cleaner day. “Oh that’s not a problem,
sustained them, rubbed and ripened sacrificially yielded on demand. It was the the growing of one body inside another. adult child who cannot stand to visit an The hit of sterile, icy air-conditioning mate, this happens. I’ve got just the
them. Growing in there, they made me sleep deprivation verging on psychosis. Repairable. The town’s vascular surgeon ailing mother, I turned my back on the made me still. I soaked it up; the cold thing-” and the nurse handed me giant,
swollen and weepy and vomity and when It was the constant need. The sudden, could push it back in, tie it off and stitch entire garden and let it die. Fear began relief, insulated in a freezer chest from shapeless scrub undies through a small
they finally emerged it was through a blinding severance from my old life, and it up at our small local hospital. Booked to ferment in my stomach and rose like fears, demands and endless things to do. opening in the door, and menstrual pads.
cutting of my flesh, a slicing through 7 from myself. I became ragged, depleted, me in for late December. bile to sting my throat. The nurse, a rugged bloke in a colourful
layers of stomach. unnurtured and unkempt. I didn’t have scrub cap, gently beckoned me to sit. He perched beside me for a moment as I
the time or care to notice a lump the size By the date of my day surgery, a pall of “Aren’t you fucking worried?” I hurled He spoke in a low, sandy voice and took dropped onto the starch sheeted hospital
Each of the two extractions left its own of a golf ball below my navel. I was so bushfire smoke had been blanketing the at my husband as he drove me to my vitals as if he were readying me for a bed. “I can’t believe how tired I am,” I
ragged scar across my belly. The first busy – changing nappies, pumping milk, town for weeks. The Currowan Fire had the hospital. “This fire is growing by manicure. “Mate, your oxygen levels are a told him, “it’s like I could crash for a
bled me almost to death. When I came mushing solids, pushing prams, tummy begun to our north and on its first day thousands of hectares a day and we bit low,” he smiled up at me, “but that’d hundred years”. “Well you do that mate”
to, startled to be alive, I found a puny, timing, play-dating, hanging on to the of life, had gobbled up 2,500 hectares haven’t done anything to prepare!” The be the same for everyone in this smoke he softly sanctioned, “you lay down and
furry mammal draped across my chest. shreds of a career, keeping up with the of forest, of animals, of homes, of air. wiper fluid spurted and drought dust right now I reckon”. He presented me with have yourself a well deserved rest.” And
The tube down my throat had scratched world as it strode on past me, attempting Ravenous, a week later it had gorged and ashen gum leaf grit scoured the a cotton gown to change into and in the so I did, I fell into a beckoning sleep,
out my voice, “Baby!” I silently mouthed, to engage with ideas, make connections, itself on 11,500 hectares, had made its windscreen. “It’s just another bushfire, toilet cubicle I removed my clothes. The waking only to see the surgeon draw an
“My baby?” be productive, innovate, endeavour, first sprint over the Princes Highway and love. We’ve always had fires in Australia, fluoro lights revealed me to myself; aged X on my stomach and the anaesthesia
strive, supply. had hungrily consumed two small coastal just gotta deal with them”. He was on and worn and uncared for. I peeled off mask go over my face and, delighted, I
The second birth was also a caesar. This time villages. I charted its speedy growth his way to work, so there was no time for my underpants, and instantly I begin to fell back into an even deeper slumber.
an ‘elective’ chopping through my sphere. I was busy, doing those things that on the Fires Near Me app, inhaling its me to quarrel that those fires had lasted bleed, as if menstruation had been hiding
So I was awake and I saw them, the masked mothers do. Like taking kids to have their acrid smog and readying my daughter’s single days, not weeks upon desiccated out, waiting for a quiet moment to let go. I was discharged with strict instructions –
medicos in blue polyester. I watched them jabs. During one immunisation, with a asthma puffers. I ceased going out into weeks. He dropped me at the entrance “You’re not gonna bloody believe this-” I to not lift anything heavier than 2 kilos;
drilling and pushing and uprooting a being hand out to restrain the bouncing child the garden in the unrelenting heat. I to the hospital and I walked its corridors called out, “I’ve just gotten my period…” not toddlers, not washing baskets, not
from within my guts. And this time, the and a tit pre-emptively exposed for when couldn’t bear to witness the liquid amber alone, following a trail of laminated I wondered if I’d have to free bleed on the shopping. My mother arrived to help
babe was able to crawl herself to my nipple the needle pierced the baby, I asked the drop all its leaves to stand skeletal in arrows down into its bowels. The intake surgery bed. Or if this kind of blood was with the children and the lifting chores
and guzzle my milk. Which made me thin, doc what he thought the golf ball could distress. Or see the plants wilted and secretary, ushering me into the pre-op different from the one the medics would and ordered me to go to bed. I found
attenuated, in no time. be doing in my stomach. A hernia, he cringing, almost in foetal position; their room, sniffed at the smell of smoke. I’d get on their hands when they cut me open it excruciating to be still, inactive, the
22 23overhead fan pushing moistureless heat of the prescribed woollen blankets for two blocks from home I had to pull over one day, honey, but not soon”. I shouted reusable beeswax wraps for everyone, it comes to us? The showground in the
from one end of the room to the other our kit and I beseeched my husband to for weeping. The pain in my guts was at my visiting mother who shouted back our children included. My husband middle of town is the official evacuation
and back again. I lay on top of the bed, go to the op-shop to find some. Instead rage but all I had too, was tears. at me that my climate change talk was purchased paint sets and scooters for the point but it’s bursting with people and
checking and rechecking the Fire App. I he went fishing, at our beach filled with tedious and annoying and to have an kids and wrote ‘from mummy and daddy’ dogs and horses and cats and gastro.
called out to my husband to please get burnt trees from the north, and I could Now bedridden again, I stayed up late attitude of hope and optimism above on the wrapping. Perhaps then we should run to the river.
up on the goddamn roof and clean the not eat his catch, could not stare that while my husband slept hot and clammy all else. “Hope is futile, faaaaaaaark,” Even though I’ve been told not to lift
gutters out. In the garden, a giant pile of creature in its dead eye. Rebelliously, I beside me. I began obsessing over the I screamed, and slammed doors like And then, ash starts to bear down on our anything, I imagine myself in the tepid
logs from a felled coral tree menaced me; took the car keys one roasting afternoon meteorological forecasts. I cracked open an adolescent. I started going crazy gardens. Charcoal gushes into the river. cool of that water, pressing my children
it was large and spiky and flammable and and drove myself to town, manoeuvring the vault of climate change predictions over the recycling - barking at anyone Small birds are thrust, dead, from the sky. once again to my breasts, holding them
I wanted it gone. I cajoled, nagged and with one hand, the other pressing into my and with dread I dived in deep – I sank in who made a sorting mistake, combing The fires have possessed entire weather against the wound they came from,
pleaded but it didn’t get done. I wanted still swollen stomach. At Vinnies, I found further than the worst case IPCC reports, through the dust pan collections to systems. I’m attached to a portable radio, shielding them with my own frail form.
to get up and do it myself but was told if two large plaid blankets; dark orange I dredged the peer reviewed data of salvage compostable matter, shaking I’m monitoring the local coverage; siren To our north and south and west; the
I did, I’d irreparably rip open my newly and thick wool and laboriously got them horrified scientists, I became subsumed with fury at the plastic stars that fell off sounds and ‘watch and act’, ‘watch and Fires are incinerating structures, killing
basted stomach. On the Fires Near Me to the car. I felt I’d been shortened and by Energy Descent futures and I gagged the children’s daycare craft and landed act’ they say. My husband gets on the every mammal, invertebrate, reptile
App the thick, grey tentacles of the fire’s stapled back together, unable to quite on Deep Adaptation ideas. At midnight I up in the sweepings. I put buckets and roof and he’s clearing; he’s out with the and bird that they catch, they’re turning
reach spread in all directions like blood stand upright. The air was bone dry hot did the final checks on the children – first pots and cups under every tap and spout, chainsaw, lopping at overhanging trees vegetation to gasses and stripping back
on a sheet. and the near distant fires made the light the little one in the cot, naked except for and raged at those who poured them and dragging their limbs to the tip on layers of soil and microbes until earth is
the same colour as the blankets. a puffy cloth nappy, hair stuck to her neck down the sink rather than on the garden. the hill. He’s scouring chip mulch off the bare and wounded and wrecked.
I googled ‘bushfire emergency survival in puddles of sweat. Then the older girl; My husband told me that he no longer garden and he knows it’s coming and it
kits’ and made lists and into bags I filled Driving home, I passed the Rural Fire clinging to a doll, grinding her 4 year-old wanted to come home after work, my feels too late. My mouth is dry, my eyes sting, my
medicines, passports, chargers, cans of Services Control Centre and slowed right teeth and creasing her brow in dream foul mood and climate collapse talk was We’re told to shelter in place. stomach is scarred and the skin on my
beans, photos, museli bars and water down, long enough to see a volunteer land. I kissed them and my tears smudged suffocating him, was asphyxiating the The power’s gone. hands parched, as I hurriedly dress my
bottles, which I dragged slowly to the front Firie, dressed in the golden suit, sitting in their faces and dripped into damp sheets. house. My mother had enough of me and The comms are dead. children in their woollen fire resistant
passageway. Out of the kids’ wardrobe I his car. Three kids and the dog were in the I wept on my sleeping partner who, when my apocalypse rants and returned north The moon is burnished orange. outfits. It’s New Year’s Eve and the dark
chose spencers, cotton pants, woollen back and in the front, the wife, sobbing awake, turned away from me, from my on the Premiere Bus before Christmas. The Fires are furious. night is glowing. I can’t see the Fire, but
socks, beanies and boots and arranged into his neck. She was clutching his jacket deepest fears, “The earth has always The Nativity Day itself was a sweltering, I smell it, taste it, feel it and I know it, in
them on tiny clothes hangers on the back around his shoulders, she wouldn’t let been changing” he says, “it happened sad and faithless affair. I had refused to My husband and I sit down to have my innards, that a mother’s body will give
of their door. We didn’t have enough him go. I began to cry myself, and only to the dinosaurs, it’ll happen to humans buy presents; instead I obstinately made the conversation - where will we go if until it’s gone.
24 25K E L LY R A M S E Y
from IN A TIME OF FIRE
September 8 No matter when you do it, Jack said, phone, so I could use the camera as a We could already feel the wind
was remembering, or trying not to. where there had been so many homes.
it’ll always be the wrong time. mirror to get the part right. He agreed pushing into our faces and creaking in I can’t remember the morning, where Chris and Tara’s home was gone.
We’d been warned about the wind. It Jack was Rawlings, lead saw, but he but grinned and looked away from me the Ponderosas and tickling up the dust, we slept or how early we took off, but I Jason’s. Phil and Tammy’s home in tribal
was in every morning briefing for a week, was Jack to me because of the books he towards the engines lining up for the shift, and you could tell this wasn’t the half of remember driving, riding in the back of housing. Jossie and Elvis’s trailer. The
a weather situation arriving Tuesday into read and because of his secret dream to not wanting to watch, maybe he thought it. A little chill ran down my arms, and I the buggy with the world rushing by. We whole trailer park. Ken’s Cabins, all those
Wednesday, a real watch out situation, have a dairy farm and his aching blue it would be weird or inappropriate to knew something was coming, but I had were leaving the North Complex and its historic cabins, part of an old lumber
the East Wind Event. When they called it eyes, which reminded me of my dad. watch the only girl brush her hair. Thanks, no idea it would be what it would be or fantastic intergalactic column, and I half- outfit at Luther Gulch, a place I had almost
“event” it sounded funny, and someone The dirt on whatever forest this was, I said when I was done, How’s it look? mean what it would come to mean for my expected clear skies leaving the fire, but rented last winter from Ken, a rascally old
made a joke about it. Everything was the Plumas maybe, was stupid, fine and Flinch hunched deeper into his bony home and everyone I loved. there were no clear skies in California. schemer with a sweet wife named Sherrie
a joke to us. Chew spit fell with little soft as sifted flour. Every line we walked, frame, blinking rapidly. It l-looks g-g- And Buckett called “load up” and I The sky was orange, it was orange whose brain was slowly succumbing to
spattering sounds into the circle. I can’t we sunk in up to our knees. Dust rose in good, he said. collected my hairbrush and stuck a boot and milky-dark, we were all taking pictures dementia -- their whole property with
remember what the joke was but one clouds and choked us. You couldn’t see Got it! Johnny hooted. He got a
on the bumper and pulled myself up, and and videos because it was insane, 0900 its nine rentals, gone. Serena’s parents’
of the guys muttered under his breath, the next person in line. Hiking in was like video of the whole thing, Flinch holding the back door of the buggy clanged like and it looked like the middle of the place, which I had always wanted to see,
toeing the dirt, and we snickered and coming down a ski slope in deep powder the camera and me brushing my wet hair a lid closing on a can of toy soldiers, and night. Mile upon hundreds of miles it was a house reached only by a hike in that
Dan said, or said with his eyes, This is -- dirt powder. Dust filled our mouths and and the green forest and the column we were wheels rolling toward the black. dark and orange and there were fires in the old folks had built themselves on the
serious guys, come on. nostrils and lungs. Somebody said it was of smoke in the distance. Fuck you, I every direction and roads closed for fires edge of a bluff. Three quarters of the
The lot where we had the briefing worse than the smoke and I thought, it’s laughed, let me see it. September 9 and the news of what was happening Meadows. All of Doolittle Creek.
was a dozer push off the corner of two a tossup. Johnny was eating something, and
filtered back from Bobby and Buckett or We drove under the orange sky and
dirt forest roads. You had to wade Usually I let my hair go the whole
Ben was sour behind his Heat Waves (not The other day, an afternoon in
appeared on my phone. the air was oddly cool under the inversion
through a dirt berm and dozens of fourteen, but it was so crusted with dirt Pit Vipers, Heat Waves), and Campbell February, I was driving home from the The Slater fire had crossed over and it felt like night and the news came
upended manzanita bushes to find a I couldn’t even mash it into a ponytail. hadn’t left yet for paternity but wanted to, grocery store and someone was burning Grayback. It jumped Indian Creek east to pouring in and I sat as still as possible trying
pee spot. That morning I rinsed my hair I dumped two bottles on my head. The his pale out-to-sea eyes pleaded to be any a pile, as someone always is in Happy west, then the wind shifted and it jumped to keep the knot in one place in my throat.
with bottled water behind the buggy, cold coated my scalp and ran into the kind of elsewhere. Bobby’s feet must hurt, Camp, and for a brief moment as my back again, then spread in two directions, In one direction the Slater was headed
placing my brush on the bumper which collar of my yellow, which would lie he never said, but he walked with a side to truck hummed by, the smoke blotted the fire had gone everywhere at once and for Gasquet, they were evacuating there.
was covered with dirt, always, no matter plastered to my neck until the day or side keel, like a rocking boat, like my friend’s the sun and the light took on an orange made a hundred thousand acre run up So my home was evacuated and our
how often Kline tried to sweep, even if he the fire’s heat dried it, but by then I’d be mom whose leg had been shortened by cast, just for half a second, and my heart and over the ridge towards Oregon. The station was evacuated and there was no
tried a night sweep to keep from pissing soaked with sweat anyway. a childhood case of Polio. That’s what 18 jumped and did a backflip. No. And I ridge where there had been an undivided place I could go when we got back, no
Jack off with the dust cloud. I asked Flinch, Hey will you hold my years of this would do to you. knew that it was the ninth of September I stand of Brewer Spruce. The drainage place was safe. On the other side, the fire
26 27was moving west, towards our property. aside from the flat, there is no flat, in fact summer a harbinger of the end.
I could not get Kevin on the phone and someone once told me that if you find a It was too much to picture our house
for all I knew our house was already gone. flat spot on the Klamath you can be sure in flames. Instead I thought of the apple
Happy Camp isn’t a valley town.
it’s man-made. trees, which were heavy with the round red
Valley towns are nice and safe, flat plains This is a river canyon, carved by the crop of early fall, trees the previous owner
sown with corn or grasses, strewn with fat Klamath’s progress home to the Pacific. The of the house had planted decades earlier,
shiny cows and stocked silos. In a valley roads squiggle and meander up the hills, not just apple but cherry, peach, pear, and
town, the whole community is laid out and each gorge feeds into the narrow next, fig. I thought of the orchard burning, then
neatly on straight streets on the green little creek gullies into the cliffed chasm of turning to blackened skeletons, how long
sheet of the valley, and in the distance a Elk Creek, with its bluffs called Whooping it would take to start over, the charred
mountain range hangs like a backdrop, Devil, which pours into the river; Clear Creek, fruit on the ground in sticky black lumps,
the white-dripped peaks little more than flowing out of the Siskiyou Wilderness fed in piles of ash.
a picturesque addendum to the bottom on snowmelt from Preston Peak, opening On we rode, now nearing Redding,
margin of the sky. into the river at a beautiful ranch; East Fork and occasionally Johnny looked back and
In a piece about the fire, a journalist and South Fork and Doolittle into Indian I tried to hide my tear-streaked face and
called Happy Camp a “mountain town,” Creek’s slot canyons and thence into the he gave me a smile of great sympathy
and that felt to me terribly inaccurate. A river, just a series of steep gouges into and I thought, Johnny, you are the best
mountain town, to my mind, sits perched the earth, with people living in or on the of them, I will love you forever for this.
on the edge of or halfway up a mountain. edges of these gulches in houses they For kindness was what I desperately
Like Telluride, there’s a mountain town. built themselves with or without permits, needed and everyone else was afraid to
But Happy Camp is a canyon town. usually the latter, and water drawn from look at me, as if fear and sorrow were a
There’s a little scrap of flat near where a creek, and firewood stacked in a shed virus they could catch.
Indian Creek flows in a knee-deep riffle and in winter, smoke spiraling cozily out We stopped at a store and they said
into the silty waters of the Klamath, the a chimney, little puffs of it rising among Mask Up and I thought, pull it together,
flat where the tribe’s offices are, and the the endless wall of conifers, notations of hold it together, and I pulled on the
lower FS station with its green engines, human life in a ceaseless woods. mask and it felt good, like an armor over
and a few houses (and now, after the fire, So funny how different smoke is by everything but my eyes. I jumped out of Kelly Ramsey
rows on rows of white travel trailers). But the season: in winter a comfort and in the buggy into the smoke. writer and wildland firefighter
28 29E M I LY S C H L I C K M A N
left & page ii:
Emily Schlickman
Distilling the Pyrocene I 2021
Digital Print, 142 x 106cm
right page:
Emily Schlickman
Distilling the Pyrocene II 2021
Digital Print, 142 x 106cm
page 32:
Emily Schlickman
Distilling the Pyrocene III 2021
Digital Print, 142 x 106cm
page 33:
Emily Schlickman
Distilling the Pyrocene IV 2021
Digital Print, 142 x 106cm
Distilling the Pyrocene
4,300,000 acres of charred ground emerged across the state of California in 2020.
350,000 acres encircled Lake Berryessa in the Northern Inner Coast Range.
30,000 acres of the Vaca Mountains were consumed by the Markley Fire.
638 acres of interior chaparral marked the initial point of ignition.
74 acres along a trail became the primary site of my fieldwork.
35 specimens told stories about what was no longer there.
1 root mold held the entire landscape.
30 3132 33
K AREN SEDAITIS In 2001 my family bought 1300 acres of smoke-wreathed swathe of white ash images has been a process of framing forest and creek in Rocky Hall, NSW. The spoke to me of a mystical alchemy and trees with my camera before studio work general idea was to protect our forest from transformation. using ink and brush in simple, gestural logging and degradation by maintaining What had once been a diverse, dappled, marks on the way to painting larger works its diversity of flora and fauna as a wildlife mysterious forest with a pristine waterway on canvas. corridor to State Forest, farming land and running like an artery through vegetal Each stage has evolved in a process National Parks. flesh was now a vast white ashscape through the filters of my eyes, feelings, In 2020, severe drought dried up the radiating a hushed and potent sense of tools and imagination to convey the creek. By the end of summer, the forest epic majesty and stoicism. beauty and grandeur of a loved landscape floor crackled with bone-dry bark and OUTPUT Art after Fire is an opportunity undergoing an ultimately life-affirming leaf. Many shrubs died from lack of water for me to express the majestic beauty and metamorphosis. and the wildlife was desperate. alchemic transformation brought about On February 1st, three large uncontrollable by fire and dynamic living matter. fires converged in the Towamba Valley and The standing trees are speaking to me of tore through our land in a pyrocumulus the cycle of life, growth, death and rebirth Karen Sedaitis event. Our forest was engulfed. We lost through dynamic, vital elements intrinsic Portal 2021 our loved, hand-built house, all of the to all of us who live on the skin of Planet Acrylic on stretched canvas infrastructure surrounding and supporting Earth. New life is surging at Rocky Hall but 45 x 60 x 1.5cm it and, most affecting, all of the property’s the old trees are dead and dying, bearing diverse vegetation. Every tree shrub and wordless witness to their experience of pages 36 and 37, left to right: blade of grass was engulfed in hot flame sudden, explosive transformation. Karen Sedaitis and reduced to ash or torched. This body of work is a devotional act of Portal #4 2021 After the fire, what I saw was an open, translation conveying my own journey Totem & Sacrifice 2021 revealed landscape; the skeleton which through shock, disbelief, grief, awe, Beelzebub 2021 lay beneath the flesh of vegetation. Every wonder and hope. I’ve created 12 ink Birth, Death, Rebirth 2021 curve, dip, gully, slope and rise was bared drawings and 7 paintings on canvas of Acrylic on stretched canvas and what trees stood blackened in that the dead and dying trees. Creating these 90 x 60 x 1.5cm each 34 35
L EE GRANT
Using maps, photographs, satellite As I stood in contemplation of the There is a deeply human need for expressing their dominance, over the events, both man-made and natural, and
imagery, photographs, screengrabs, garden of the wonders of space,” belonging. This is especially so in regards flora, fauna and even their own kind. This remain unsettled as sites of trauma.
news quotes and scientific data All the Milosz writes, “I had the feeling that I to “place”, from which arises a sense of notion of supremacy is deeply attached to Certainly both 2020 and 2021 have been
world is here is a cartography of lament was looking into the ultimate depths, tribal kinship and identity. place and a sense of a common identity. a testament to these ‘wounds’, personally
that responds to a range of emotional the most secret regions of my own A key factor in this attachment is the This unspoken understanding is implicit in and for the inhabited community in which
after-effects from the 2019-20 Summer being; and I smiled, because it had landscape within which one might find our nature and examples of this is littered I live. However, my ideas began to shift
fires. It is a personal meditation – an after- never occurred to me that I could be oneself and how we determine and throughout human history. with the desire to examine landscape
fire landscape observation if you like – so pure, so great, so fair! My heart express identity both from that place and Landscape is not a genre but a medium... as an imaginary and conceptual space,
that poetically considers the biophobia burst into singing with the song carry that to the realms beyond. It is a natural scene mediated by culture. with obvious links to the natural world
induced by such an event. of grace of the universe. All these Landscape therefore is not simply what It is both a represented and presented around me. Through an experimental
But rather than just a conveyance of constellations are yours, they exist we see in the space around us, but rather, space, both a signifier and a signified, making process of a small series of zines
doom it also notes moments of awe and in you; outside your love they have it is a way of seeing that is determined both a frame and what a frame contains, and one handmade book, my aim was to
wonder in the natural world and that in no reality! How terrible the world in different ways: socially, culturally and both a real place and its simulacrum, both explore graphic ways of expressing my
the grand scheme of things, just how seems to those who do not know individually. We may see landscape with a package and the commodity inside a own ideas, research and responses to eco-
vulnerable and insignificant we really are. themselves! When you felt so alone our eyes but we interpret it with our minds package. induced trauma and to my own ongoing
and abandoned in the presence of and ascribe values to it for intangible (Mitchell, W. J. T. (1994) Landscape and relationship with the landscape. This
the sea, imagine what solitude the reasons. Power. Chicago: University of Chicago “cartography of place” has enabled both
waters must have felt in the night, or Landscape can therefore be viewed as a Press, pg 5) a healing and a morbid realisation of my
the night’s own solitude in a universe cultural construct in which our sense of Initially, my idea was to examine the role own insignificance in the grand scheme of
without end!” And the poet continues place, memories and imagination reside. of the landscape where I reside in the things. The act of making and collecting
this love duet between dreamer and It is in this context that this series of small context of last Summer’s bushfires as a thoughts and ideas into a bookish format
world, making man and the world zines and one artist book have been uniquely traumatic event. The premise has, in this instance, allowed me to think
into two wedded creatures that are created. They have been crafted around from which was to study how landscape about and express my own experience of
Lee Grant paradoxically united in the dialogue various actual and imagined landscapes, sets conditions and affords particular landscape ie. an experience of mapping
All the world is here (Cover) 2021 of their solitude. both internalised and externalised. opportunities for local memory practices my imagination and of reading the
Concertina book Humans have had a longstanding need in response to traumatic events. Indeed, landscape around me, of observing not
15 x 21cm Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space to conquer the landscape as a way of rural landscapes can be ‘wounded’ by just what is there but what is not there and
38 39most importantly to find some meaning in choices, of cutting paper to size, of understand that the artbook is an area that i. Percussit lunam / Moonstruck: the seeming chaos. stapling or stitching, taping and gluing I am interested in further exploring. To this uses images from the NASA archive, as well as portraits of space In receiving the grant, the gift of time and most brain bendingly, mathematical end I also created a book dummy for an trackers and photos of interstellar paraphernalia I made as part of and space to experiment, and creation calculations for printing double-sided altogether different project – a project the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. Landscape without pressure (though the latter is pages! These basic – kinetic – approaches that conversely addresses trauma, but as alien, heroic and conquerable. questionable!), I was able to spend more to tangibly realising my research and ideas in an altogether different capacity. This time than usual making experimental have been both fun but more importantly handmade artbook, titled Mnemosyne, ii. Deflagro / Destroyed by fire: ‘mistakes’, and most importantly, satisfying. And for every mistake I have is divided into two parts with a separate explores the shock effects of landscape destroyed by fire and echoes engaging intently with the process of made throughout the process (there were booklet for text and an index. It is based the emotional trauma derived from such a catastrophic event. bookmaking, design and creation. a lot), I have learned a new skill and/ on work created for a commission for the iii. Pantheos / All of everything is divine: This process has been critical in allowing or bookmaking application which I will Australian War Memorial in 2018. The is a meditation on nature and biophilia and the sacred connection me to consider how to sequence ideas in certainly use in my overall practice. process of making this book will I hope between humans and the world in which we live. a poetic and non-linear way – something I am grateful to Caren, my mentor, and inform the publication of a limited edition iv. Psychoterratica / Nature deficit not always undertaken in the realm of the also to Daniela for sharing the creative of 4 plus 1 AP artist books, from which I is a series of sequenced photographs of TV imagery that explores ‘truth-telling’ medium of photography. process of undertaking a new project hope I might eventuate a trade version human disconnection from the natural world. It is a visual lament of the Rather than employing a linear narrative, in such a short timeframe (anathema to of the publication. To be given the time, modern world and the unfolding horrors of climate change, war, famine I have jotted down a jumble of visual how I normally work and engage in the space and financial support (ah, the bliss and the current pandemic for which we are ourselves responsible. vignettes that reflect the anxious state artmaking process.) If I am being honest, of solitude!) to realise a raft of ideas and of my own mind – and seemingly of the the outcomes which I have created are not to experiment accordingly has been v. Prima gentes / Yuwinj dahri-bulwal: world today. necessarily ones that I am fully satisfied profoundly enriching for my practice. And is a series of Yuin portraits made on the set of the documentary Initially, I wanted to embrace the chaos with. However, the act of making these for this, I am deeply grateful. film Yuwinj dahri-bulwal (Yuin Stand Strong) and reflects the pride of my anxiety about the fires and to see has pointed me firmly in the direction of some of this country’s First Nations people. this reflected in the work I made – hence of bookmaking as an integral element right page: vi. Hotel regem / The Monarch Hotel: the choice of making zines, as a casual, of my work. Whilst I already understood Lee Grant explores one of Moruya’s landmark pubs, The Monarch Hotel. Using throwaway object. Ironically there was this to some degree in a commercial Other Landscapes (Zine Covers) 2021 archival documents and photos alongside portraits of local punters nevertheless an order in this chaos. The sense (I have published 2 books), it has Series of 6 and details of pub materiality, this zine celebrates the pub as a central act of making, employing certain design been affirming to my practice to fully 15 x 21cm meeting place for social cohesiveness in regional communities. 40 41
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