What would you do if you felt exiled in a place you call home? What measures would you take if you felt excluded from the community you believe you belong to? If you found yourself with nowhere to escape to, trapped in a space where your oppressors reside, what steps could you take? How do […]
( ) // Signal: Begin with a scene of a faded colonial signal —road sign, farm fence, fuzzy radio broadcast, oxidised inscription. How does this signal connect you to the past? What phantom dispatches does it relay —impossible testimony—what orders make flesh reverb // are they written? Exhumation in brown // red: Imagine the process […]
CIRCULAR / LINEAR / TIME In Te Ao Māori, time is cyclical: both the beginning and end are part of the same phenomenon. The past, present and future are experienced simultaneously. The whakatauki (proverb)‘Ka mua, ka muri’ is the idea that we walk backwards into the future. It tells us that we must look to […]
We would like to acknowledge the sovereign Traditional Custodians of the land on which we live as uninvited guests, in the suburb now known as Coburg – the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the Eastern Kulin Nation in Naarm. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri and Boonwurrung people of the Kulin Nation, who are the Custodians of […]
We have been sending each other drawings and letters and adding onto them. The artwork is so busy and full like a conversation with all of the words squished in together. It’s hard to talk about our friend because we miss them but because we both knew them we are sort of keeping them here […]
September 2024 I composed this editorial many times over in my head, but had trouble putting the words down. This text surmises months of thinking and of avoiding thinking. Under frameworks of Western social values, loss and grief are often siloed; only appropriate in certain circumstances. [1] Western mourning practices are marked by offering condolences, […]
I don’t live as an artist. Destiny Deacon, 2018 multi-dimensional magick K’ua K’ua Erub/Mer woman funny sharp strong communal history politics radio performance photography video installation Thanks, Sis, for dropping the ‘c’ for us urban Blaks You gave us way to break […]
I take my pill every morning and I observe its colour, the same pale blue used in a series of works by Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Loverboy, made between 1989 and 1991. Blue curtains, blue stacks of paper, blue lollies. The title suggests that the works are portraits, yet these monochromes do not depict a figure; instead, […]
Like all Indigenous people, I believe unequivocally, that my lands are the most beautiful lands in the world. My Country, Larrakia Country, is so abundant with life and beauty, gifting us astounding moments daily. Gangly legs and knobbly knees, I’m a child standing in our backyard and watching the sky light up with radiant pink […]
Underneath the water, leaves and coins, I suspect there might be more bluestone, sitting on top of a large bed of soil of Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Country. I chose to photograph this place as a way to anchor this piece, following an exercise my friend Tim Humphries shared with me earlier this year. Then he […]
18 August 2024 Dearest Zainab, As my sister Safa and I were rushing down Sydney Road — stuck behind the 19 tram in Brunswick — trying to make it to the last coffee shop open on a Sunday, she mentioned your cousin, Lina. How her visit in January felt like it had just happened, last […]