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References to text, textiles and landscape hold a central preoccupation in my work.
The rhythm of writing has a curtain kind of sound, feel and form. Susan Stewart has written that "speech leaves no mark or gesture; it is immediate and can only reappear in another voice. Writing on the other hand contaminates, leaves a trace beyond the moment and beyond the life of the body." * Script like speech is both real and abstract and allows for the visualization of sound.
These concerns follow my interest in the interplay between culture and nature, abstraction and realism, representation and materiality. It is this intimate relationship between textiles and place; texture and landscape that I am fascinated with and draw inspiration from. Using text in the form of script, paintings and prints seek to hover in an indeterminate space between nature and culture - between the forgotten landscape and the materiality of text, texture and textiles.
Continuing themes are memory, ritual, silence and time. These themes link to my sustained investigation in how individuals, particularly daughters, mothers and grandmothers from displaced cultural communities reconstruct forgotten landscapes while re-establishing themselves in new environments such as Australia .
Works on paper form an investigative process in my art practice. In the series Touch I wanted to have a sense of play and delight. The materials used have a multiplicity of references, located and locked in memory. Tactility and memory are central to this work.
* Susan Stewart, On Longing, Duke University press 1993, p 31
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