This exhibition identified the unique nature of the headwaters of Back Creek and surrounds in Beechmont and assists people to form coherence and understand what makes the place thrive. It explored the themes of biodiversity, regeneration and reciprocal relationships between ecosystems. It’s an insight into how life evolves in nature and patterns of nature that has been i the landscape for a long time beyond culture. It’s an invitation for people to use pigments as a bridge to be a part of the living world where they always belong.

Running Rivers was a personal, intimate and subjective journey of the waterways initiated from my need to feel at home in my body and place. A sensory journey understanding its relationship to elements. This new series of works are abstract, and are textured and layered, reoccurring and composite. It is a journey of my own pulsation of my body meeting the pulsation of place.

Through many deep conversations on the landscape with an indigenous elder, what was revealed was that it’s a journey of remembering.

To locate my inner pulsation, I collected plant pigments from around Beechmont to make inks and then allowed my body to respond to each pigment in the way of making marks. I practiced ritual dance to creatively enquire into the wisdom of my body it’s reality, multidimensionality and truth.

Pulsation of place was marked with earth pigments processed in to paints, soft pastels, crayons and wax as mapping of place as I walked along the waterway . This was my way of making sense of my world to reconcile between the pulsation of my body and place.

Finally layered the work with commercially available soft pastels made with pigments from all over the world to honour all those people who were called here to this land as migrants, the vibrancy and richness they bring to this land.

This journey has been a journey of remembering my gait, posture, words, rhythm, time and space; all belonging in a decolonised body.

Running Rivers: Pigments of Place features over 50 new works on paper and fabric and a ritual installation titled ‘Elemental Shrine’ sharing a process video through film in collaboration with artists Scott Chrisman and Padma Menon.

The Centre, Beaudesert, QLD , Australia 22 October – 17 December 2022