Working without a dedicated studio means using spaces and opportunities to make work outside and inside locations. This is my second visit to the site as an artist in residence and a different experience to the first. The climb at the top is so much harder now and kind of worrying. Considering how to make site specific/on site works without adding chemicals and rubbish to the space finds me collecting materials from below the site area; seaweed from the beach, preparing an alternative developing medium and preparing a salt fixing solution with a mixture of salts from the cupboard. Table sea salt and Himalayan pink salt was what I had in the cupboard. Using my pinhole camera images the initial test images were developed on site to see exposure and measure the potential of the medium. It all worked. I accidentally fogged a couple and watched the image fade out. I understand that salt fixes stabilise the image but do not necessarily make them permanent. With other research some have been stable but small areas still seem to respond to light.
Conceptually using the medium in this way does engage with notions of impermanence, breaking landscape and breaking memory. Shooting directly into the sun is not the best for my eyes I know. Closing my eyes as the exposure ended permitted me to view the afterimage from the light on my retina inside my visual system. Making mental notes on colour and shape these were recorded in my notebook ASAP. While sitting I closed my eyes for a second time, inside the room to identify the end of the afterimage or find a secondary reducing afterimage and recorded most of those. The initial plan is to make little paintings of afterimages using oil as I have some around. So so fabulous to meet this group of artists, local, interstate and regional. Did not know how many published and soon to be published authors we had living here. Thanks to Kat for her support, brilliant smile and for bringing us altogether. Happy happy experience for me. Although we just met as strangers, I am deeply saddened for someone's sudden news. May those red dancing shoes be worn in joyous dance every day forward. We are all strangers until we are not.
WRITING LIGHT AT NOBBYS WHIBAYGANBA SITE RESIDENCY 2021
My art making does not sit at a distance from me, way above my head, far off to the right. It exists as I exist. I cannot remove the history. I cannot disconnect from the layers holding this building up. I cannot ignore those who walked this same land before me, prehistoric beasts, animals, indigenous cultivators, settlers, convicts and those who imprison them, the layered colonisation of this city. I cannot ignore the maritime history, the ocean, the harbour and industry. There is blood red inside these walls and I see it if I look hard. Everything penetrates this time. Funnily enough I am not overwhelmed as time moves on and I inhabit the space each day, inside and outside space, physical bodily space and emotionally charged inner creativity. I simultaneously feel joy and wonder as I load my cameras with film and paper, place paper out into the light for an impression of time. The wind only moves one small camera left onsite as I check and renew each week up until week six. One hour of light, one day of light, one week of light, one month almost of light, all fragments recording my presence here. My own history is unwritten by me, my longing for acceptance, recognition and respect as an artist in this city and this country particularly still hangs over me like a weighted cloak. I think of that here as well. Will I make good work? Will anyone know that I was here? I find it hard to dislodge fear entirely this past six weeks, these six years, these sixty years. My pulse quickens when I see my light is on again. It’s flashing and soft and a little encrusted with sea salt today. My interest in art practice is heightened. I am a realist and there is always a more difficult response though worth examining some days for what it is. I cannot totally dismiss those who continue to turn off my lights, or who leave me isolated standing alone in a newer light with no intention to harm but no intention of inclusion. I know I should let them go; let the anxiety that is released go and I inwardly know I can stand on my own here. So I do stand and embrace that position at the end of the six weeks anyway; and I now cast them out; those doubts and fears and those controlling the lights. My cloak is now thrown over their eyes so they cannot see me rise. Rise to this site. Rise to this art. The only thing I can show you is the light I have collected here by the sea and in the studio research following.