2013

Out for a walk up our street behind the Horticultural Society. The children and I tore clumps of grass, twisted them, folded messy braids, threaded through wire for horses to eat. We ran up and down wood chip piles then walked to inspect a very old red gum, its skin patterned by a torn-off creeper, light-poured-on-sap colour. I suggested we skip around the tree chant, clap, unlock its sacramentum, but Marlene said she knew its magic, Gabe did too. Then we spotted an enormous earth worm, not easily caught, picked it up with bark-stick-bush-utensil, recoiled at clammy tensile muscle pulsing, pointy end-head probing, enfolding into itself. We walked away––saw a bee take pollen, flit from flower to flower. We walked on to the fern glade, saw emus with sharp beaks, almond eyes, bluish silver threadbare necks. They made simple grunts like bongo drums, gaging humans; a sound wall of protection to separate themselves, define our otherness.

Boundary Speak (Diaries 2013-2021) centrally focuses on reportage of my life’s happenings, notes on readings, phantasms or wild forays, riffs off music or footnotes from poems that take me on a strange journey, ruminations and thought fragments. My outsider artwork is focal on my Re-learn your Alphabet for the Twenty-First Century drawings (some of which are collaborations with my children), my robot series, as well as many other drawings undertaken over the period 2013-2021.