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Intertidal
Drift, 2005
Intertidal,
2005
Tidal,
2005
Intertidal is the title of a solo exhibition held at Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, 3/75 Flinders Lane, Melbourne during May 2005 and includes a series of paintings on canvas and timber that consists of graduated horizontal stripes of materials that I mostly found on beaches and then ground into pigments. These include cuttlefish from Victoria and Tasmania, graphite from Tasmania, charcoal from St Kilda Pier pavilion that burnt down in 2003 and washed to shore on the beach near where I was born, red, brown and yellow oxides from Tasmania and Victoria, crushed pumice from far north Queensland, bought green oxide, bought beeswax from Queensland and the final coating of bought eucalyptus oil from Tasmania. These simple resulting physical structures are a solid-form rendition of the sensation of my current existence. Intertidal is about terrain and encounter. I am present as this work and bound by a sense of wading; marked between land and sea this series presents a sense of coded demarcation of space and intention. These marks in part represent the tidal-line marks of the spiritual waters-edge-zone into which I am cast and willingly wade between solid shoreline and watery depths. The space between is a constant theme in my work and life. I embrace my maternal Tasmanian Aboriginal culture, yet I must manage the everyday world of the insatiable western capitalist system that promises more and more whilst the intangible wealth of my original culture lures me ever back to the depths of knowledge, satisfaction and creation, that exist for me beyond the written and the spoken. Intertidal is more than a word, for me it is a sensation that articulates how I have been feeling since I left Australia in September 2001 for a year of residencies and since that date have undergone a non stop array of personal, employment and life changing experiences. The only constant in my life seems to be an endless sense of movement somewhat like the tides. This connection with the seas and salt waters gives me some courage and much comfort and I feel its pull wherever I am. I created my first significant Intertidal work in 2003 at ANU for the <ABSTRACTIONS> exhibition http://www.anu.edu.au/culture/abstractions/artists/jg_1.htm because this sense of being pulled in different directions, living between and within varied states and places then conveyed and still best conveys the mysteries of place, seeming coincidence and the relief and release of locating story and medium in my everyday. Intertidal is an exhibition, like those past, about me now navigating my reality. Consisting of reflections in to the deep past of my self, family, ancestors and the means of materialising form there are also works about me now and questions about the expectations of the art market. |
