1. Water Works is an ongoing project with no pre-determined path forward or a clear idea of its final resolution. The project places importance on the process (presence) over the outcome (future). It considers how I might work with fewer images while identifying more uses for the images I produce as an ecological aware action.
2. Originally, these two images for Water Works were made for the exhibition Utopian Tongues, curated by Jake Treacy, at Seventh Gallery, Melbourne, Australia, in 2018. The exhibition provided artists with a platform to consider how art might act as a conduit for ‘potent change, transformation and healing.’
3. An entry point to making these images was the following text by Hong Kong–US martial artist Bruce Lee (1940–1973).
Empty your mind.
Be formless, shapeless, like water.
You put water into a cup, it becomes the cup.
You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle.
You put it into a teapot, it becomes the teapot.
Now water can flow or it can crash.
Be water, my friend.
4. At the time of making these images, I was living in the Central Province of Papua New Guinea with my Bougainville husband. I was situated in a new culture and society which demanded flexibility and adaptability due to the unpredictable nature of everyday life of living in Papua New Guinea.
Lee’s philosophical analogy to water as a receptive, malleable entity stripped of ego and preconceptions became a valuable metaphor for me to negotiate life in Papua New Guinea. Particularly how Lee invites us to adapt to arising situations and flow around and absorb obstacles rather than crash against them. Stagnant water ceases to breathe, while flow becomes analogous to progress and personal growth.
Being embedded in the Papua New Guinean society also required me to have greater practicality and use my skills for many purposes (as opposed to being a specialist) to produce multiple effective outcomes. Furthermore, access to many things (household goods, services, or even art practices) was limited, and we continually made do with what was available to us at the time.
This way of living (and thinking) profoundly affected how I make my images function, both aesthetically and in practical terms.
5. Images have been presented as part of the Bakehouse Studio Billboards Project for the Centre for Contemporary Photography in 2019 and for the Picture Windows commission for the City Of Melbourne Council in 2020. In both instances, the images were simply rotated to work with the billboard perspective (prioritising image function over original aesthetic choices). I made one of the images into a short video for a one-night gathering for Telos in Melbourne in 2021. Another image was printed onto paper and had embroidered text embedded into the surface for the exhibition Ecologies of Change in 2021. Curated by Clare Humphries (Australia), Jacki Baxter (UK) and Venessa Pugh (UK), this project brought together artists ‘who share an ethics of care for Earth's ecosystems.’
At present, these works have been printed onto fabric, and I have embroidered text on them. I am thinking of utilising these pieces of fabric to make a quilt for my baby.