Blood counts, 2004
tea-tree, kelp, linen, clay, acrylic medium, 4 parts, variable dimensions

Artist's statement: February 2004

I have been drawn to collecting from coastlines from an early age. By including this aspect of my life in this work I have visually recollected the lives and journeys of women, including my ancestors, and the vast distances travelled from their north east Tasmanian homelands.

Since moving from Tasmania to Victoria  six months ago I have often reflected on Tasmanian Aboriginal women forcibly removed since the late 1790s to Bass Strait and Westernport Bay and further afield to King and Kangaroo Island, to King George Sound in Western Australia and even across to Mauritius and Rodrigues and St Pauls islands in vast voyages with their children, sealers and even their dogs.

Participation in this exhibition has provided me the opportunity to focus on the isolation of Aboriginal women out of place and time and to explore pervasively difficult aspects of intercultural interaction over the last two hundred years. I am interested in working with connections and disparities between the materials incorporated in this work and their use in the past and present. This piece is a response to stories of brutality, bondage, disease, pride, honour, memory, continuities and connections of cause and effect that have brought us to this state.

Tasmanian Aboriginal Women in Victoria the sea tide rush and flood slavery seals and sealers whalers and huts tea tree sticks spears chisels pelts pegging of skins organs John Batman syphilis interference rubbings white immigrants dates 1797 1833 1835 1841 and disruption sickness blood health death slavery assault buried bone children captivity dress habit fabric memory texture skirt accounts truths fictions chaos absence from homeland refute disrepute language of sea and land and wind kelp refrain from restraint