Mangrove Stories
Metcalfe Gallery, Brisbane Institute of Art, Windsor, Brisbane.
28 October - 8 November, 2016
Artist Statement
Stories are an intrinsic part of our make-up as human beings. They are the tales we tell ourselves to reinforce our sense of identity, as individuals and as groups, and all contain Truth in some guise.
We tell them in as many ways as we have senses and minds to appreciate them. Novels, poems, pictures, cartoons, even gardens, clothing and games are all stories in their own ways. They speak to us as Ideas-given-form, and they communicate and are perceived at both the conscious and subconscious levels.
In this exhibition, I’ve chosen the Mangrove Forest as the setting for my stories, and use ceramics, poetry and sound to tell them. My characters come from the Mangroves and are described in lines, forms, colours, textures, sound and words.
Here, there are themes of Life and Death, Change, and Identity, but I hope that the objectivity inherent in the story format presents these concepts from a calm, even playful perspective.
May they move across your imagination with rhythm and tension, and an affirming resolution.
Music for this exhibition was from the Original Score for the Soundtrack of the “Lake House” by Rachel Portman, and was played under APRA Licence.
The Mangrove Stories
- The Poems accompanying each piece
These poems are of variable length. The longer ones are self-explanatory, however some are of just one word. The intent for these is that that one word serves as a momentary mind-play. Say the word in your mind, repeat it, and "taste" what is evoked.
To And From Mud: In Kali and Shiva’s Garden
Now…
Shiva is Mud
Kali pierces
Warms and revives
Sculpts and caresses
Drawing out blossoms and
fragrance
Now…
Shiva walks as perfume
Time diluting
Time diluted
To earth unravelling
Metamorphosing into Mud.
The Shells
Water makes music with wind
Wind sings to water
Shells listen
And echo their song
Are gently carried by water
Wind-brushed as they lie on mud
And continue to echo
Echo
Echo water and wind
Rest
Lie quietly
Call gently
Amidst lapping wavelets
Surrounded by
Enveloped in and out and in.
Timelapse
Stationary in Place
Mobile in Time.
Join Me On The Mud
Now…
Join with me to sit on muddy seats
With touch and sight
A poem to make
Of mud and leaves and shells
A mind to clear
Through sensation and memory
Present now
And for the next
A wish of presence
Balmed.
Mangrove Leaf Story - The Dance of the Particles
I am a Leaf
Sun sustained
With Wind dancing
To Mud, falling
Invited to dine with a Crab.
I am a Crab
Mud collating
Leaf collecting
To age and eat
Hoarding these in my burrow.
I am an Amphipod
Crab detritus eating
In tide pool hiding
Tiny and flitting
Supped upon by a Toadfish.
Now…
I am a Toadfish
Tide coat-tail riding
Orally investigating
Mud surface vacuuming
Adding Ammonium to the water.
I am Ammonium
Animal produced
Water entwined
Brownian borne
Quietly diffusing Nitrogen
I am a Root
Mudflat probing
Water distilling
Nitrogen acquiring
Breathing with the Tide.
I am a Cell
Sunshine partnered
Ammonium incorporating
Palisading green
Existence in a Leaf.
Now I am a Leaf.
Salt encrusts me.
I face the sun and drink photons.
Emerging
A wave
Rebounds obliquely
And finds in itself
Complexity.
Endings and Beginnings
Birth
A season
Another
Another
Another
Devolution
Now…
Resolution
Dissolution
Now…
The Jellyfish
With rims rippling
Umbrellas made of water
Pulse on incoming tide
Floating free-forms swell
Does gravity define?
What the Toadfish Saw:
(A suite of Poems)
Catenella2
Waves of waves.
Caulerpa
Feathers from the earth.
Halimeda
Neolithic
Stone growing
They can float!
Padina
Flare.
Sargassum
Pearl-strung.
Spring Tide 1
Sun and Moon aligned
The sea knows
And kisses samphire.
Spring Tide 2
Sun and Moon join
When air is scarce
And water is drawn to land
In smothering embrace.
High Tide
Small fish wait
Crabs burrowed
Creatures sequestered
As larger ones range
Though lilting waters.
Low Tide
Mud breathes.
Stomata
I am outside
An inside
At the gate.
Night
I dream dreams
Of moving paths
Through warmth and dark
And cold and storm
Through quiet and cacophony.
Flux
One
Many
Divided
Attached.
Leaf
The sky is falling.
Foam
Foam clouds
A sky of water and earth.
Breeze
Afternoon
Tide high
Even secluded pools dance.
Sway
A place…
Every place…
Where particles are waves
And forms are fluids.
Diatom
Microscopic
Myriads
Meshed.
Dusk
Last rays are colour
Beings are shadows
Quiet creeps.
Salt Water Story
One amongst many
In water suspended
Sieved by root
Carried by sap
Accumulated and segregated
By Leaf
Excreted
Returned to many.
For further information about “Mangrove Stories”: