A Cloud Never Dies
Video projection, charcoal and pastel on paper, 2024
Storm + Night & Bend in the Horizon
A Cloud Never Dies,
Painting, collage, projection
Jan Manton Gallery, Brisbane
21 January - 6 February, 2025
A Cloud Never Dies draws upon the teachings of Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, who proposes that a cloud does not disappear but transforms into rain, mist, or snow—an allegory for perpetual change. This notion of transformation resonates deeply within the work, which seeks to capture the transient and tempestuous beauty of the coastal sky while navigating personal grief and loss.
Rooted in the experiential and gestural, the series incorporates Plein-air painting, lusciously pigmented watercolours on paper, punctuated with collage, and video projection. Created during a period of profound personal transition, the work attempts to translate the fleeting life of clouds, sky, and the horizon in pigmented hues. The act of painting at dusk—when the light shifts rapidly—became a ritual, echoing the instability of memory and experience. The horizon line recurs throughout as both a stabilising and disrupting force and a point of transition between presence, absence, colour and plane.
Revisiting the atmospheric studies of J.M.W. Turner and the immersive colour fields of Mark Rothko during the creation of this work, the watercolours range from naturalistic depictions to abstract fields, to distortion, where pigment and water blur unpredictably. These evolving forms reflect both environmental flux and internal states of transformation.
Through the integration of video projection and collage, the work moves beyond the frame, creating immersive spaces that blur reality and illusion. A Cloud Never Dies meditates on impermanence, resilience, and environmental care, inviting consideration on cycles of change, loss, and renewal.
She Does (Working Title) on Paper
Video projection, charcoal and pastel on paper, 2024
She Does (Working Title) on Paper
Video projection, charcoal and pastel on paper, 2024
She Does (Working Title) on Paper gives visual form to the memory and experience of the liminal space between dying and death. In caring for someone exiting this life, I felt like a caretaker of memories and the objects—boxes, antiquities, and personal effects—wherein these memories are infused.
The light of video projection, the friable and condensed application of charcoal and pastel, and torn paper evidence the complex fragility, intimacy, and exhaustion of this temporal space when one is confronted with their own mortality via the death of a parent.
Driven by a hypnotic dirge the projection of performing in my father’s suit is layered and animated into ghostly actions onto sweeping gestural lines and soft monochromic tones. This drawing ritualises care and nurtures relationality to quietly honour women’s unseen labour and question the value of care in a society that values capital.
Wish You Were Here (Redcliffe)
Installation, 2024
Redcliffe Art Gallery, Moreton Bay, QLD.
4 May — 13 July 2024
Wish You Were Here (Redcliffe)
Installation, 2024
Redcliffe Art Gallery, Moreton Bay, QLD.
4 May — 13 July 2024
Sound by Mick Dick.
Documentation Video by Christine Hall.
Wish You Were Here is an installation of collages, projected video, light, tape drawing and Augmented Reality. The project is a humorous retort to to the uncertainty in this era of compound crisis and the unseen labor of women. Uncanny household objects collide with uncertain landscapes. In search of progress, multiple figures attempt to travel, yet go nowhere. This interdisciplinary work transforms the isolation and endurance of contemporary life into a mesmerising carnival of ghostly silhouettes. Through repetitive rhythm and monotonous loops, non-specific locations and an unspecified time, this work blends the physical and the psychological for a moment of hypnotising and joyful reprieve.
This work borrows absurdist collage from Dada; steals its introspective title from Pink Floyd’s song of the same name; and visualises my experience of being a primary carer. The work acknowledges the emotional, psychological and physical balancing act of holding space for family. Domestic items indirectly speak to the unpaid, and unacknowledged, yet nevertheless expected responsibilities that women fulfil in the family environment. For me, the unknowable and surreal landscape of transitioning from daughter to parenting my parent is one of endurance. Wish you were here combines the loss of self, associated with caring for others, with a psychedelic continuum that promises endless energy to keep going in this weird and changing world. In terms of media: works on paper provide an accessible point of entry to the exhibition, while new media, lighting and projection components will expose audiences to the possibilities of interdisciplinary installation
Wish You Were Here in Pink with Eye Ball Fish
Video and mixed media, w 150 x h 150, 2023
Wish You Were Here in Pink with Eye Ball Fish
Video and mixed media, w 150 x h 150, 2023
This work began during the stop-start-stasis of COVID-19, transforming the isolation and gruelling continuation of the pandemic into a mesmerising carnival of ghostly silhouettes. Within colliding and overlapping media—video, collage and hand drawing - multiple figures attempt to travel yet go nowhere. The work visualises the often unseen, monotonous, and highly gendered care work. The repetitive rhythms and endless loops evoke the milieu of domestic labour and the intertwined states of endurance and exhaustion. Through the work’s non-specific locations, elusive temporal registers, the piece visualizes the often unseen and gruelling aspects of care work in a hypnotic and lurid cycle highlighting the multidimensional nature of experience creating an absurd yet uplifting work