drift, 2020
My practice examines the liminal space between ‘seeing’ and ‘being’. I record my sensory responses to the Australian landscape as a means of practicing deliberate slow looking, and, in so doing, place value on slowness to counter the fast pace of contemporary culture.
A series of five large mixed media works on paper, Drift (the space between us), explores the dialogue between object and space: Physical balance, the point of connection between things and the anticipation of future connections.
Inspired by the proliferation of driftwood structures I witnessed along the length of my local beach after huge storms, I was struck by the human engagement with nature in this place, the desire to make order from debris, and the elegance of balance and interconnectedness in these transient structures.
As my drawings developed, COVID simultaneously unfolded and the driftwood structures became a metaphor for the human. Each wood ‘drift’ is held together by delicate forces in fine balance, but now these tenuous webs are also the social contracts binding some together and holding others apart in isolation. They promise future physical connection beyond the familial and domestic.