Tidal Meditation, May – August 2019 | (Turtle Swamp on Canaipa & Deanbilla Bay on Minjerribah)

Since beginning as a young artist student member of the Ferny Hills Painter’s Group – convened by artist educator Audrey Kelk – the Northside Creative Artists Association in Brisbane and the Brisbane School of Art with artist educator Irene Amos in 1977-8 its almost 43 years now that I have been involved with artist collectives and artist groupings in Australia and overseas.

From March 2018 until November 2019 I had the pleasure to be involved with two local Canaipa artist collectives; ‘Canaipa Mudlines’ and ‘Trica Dobson’s Weaving Circles’. These two groups include local artists who focus on and feature personal, collaborative and eco friendly, creative responses to art and ecology in the SMBI [Southern Moreton Bay Islands] region on Quandamooka country.

‘Field Notes – Walking Meditation’, is part of my ongoing ‘Tidal Meditations’ series of video and sound works. More specifically, this particular work was made as a response to the Canaipa Mudlines site generated residency in May 2019 at Deenbilla Bay. It is imagined as a queer walking meditation composition. It draws on my earlier art and ecology work where personal walking meditations are performed as a way to contemplate and reflect on the impermanence of life.

I acknowledge the Quandamooka People as the traditional custodians of the lands in which we live, make and work where sovereignty was never ceded. We pay respects to their elders and their youth, past, present and emerging – and stand in sovereignty with the Uluru Statement from the Heart and their ongoing resistance against colonisation.

Whistling Kite Artist Studio on Canaipa

Established in June 2018 on Canaipa [Russell Island, QLD].

My newly established artist studio builds out from earlier iterations of artist-run studios. Including Jedda Studio [Ballina, NSW 2013-2018], Black Glossies Studio [Katoomba, NSW 2012-2013], Newport Studio [Williamstown, VIC 2008-2012] , St Kilda Studio [St Kilda, VIC 1999-2005], Enmore Darlinghurst Bondi North Studio [ Sydney, NSW 1989-1999 ], AXIS Clinton Street Studio [New York City, USA 1988], Crouch End Studio [London, UK 1984 & 1988], That Space Studios [Brisbane, QLD 1985-1988] , Arana Hills Artist Studio [Brisbane, QLD 1964-1984]

We acknowledge the Quandamooka People as the traditional custodians of the lands in which we live, make and work where sovereignty was never ceded. We pay respects to their elders and their youth, past, present and emerging – and stand in sovereignty with the ULURU STATEMENT FROM THE HEART and their ongoing resistance against colonisation.”