“The history contained in the wall map was
meant to inform domesticity as evidenced in Vermeer’s
The Art of Painting.” - Svetlana Alpers n
Mygrations hangs in an enclosed space separated from
other works in the gallery. Seen from a distance through
the doorway, it resembles a vista of muted aquamarine.
The blue stretches from ceiling to floor. The colour
cannot be wall paint; it doesn’t have that uniformity,
although its large-scale coverage does allude to a painted
wall.
Closer up it is immediately evident that the blue is
a large collage made entirely from small squares of
ocean maps. The upper edge cascades over a wide flat
ledge. We cannot step back far enough to take it all
in. The 2 sides of the work are framed by a narrow black
void, which gives Mygrations a detached, floating sensation.
It ripples gently in the forced air currents of the
gallery and in response to our nearby movements.
The softly lit surface reflects hundreds of slightly
irregular rows. Each 2cm edge of map ever so slightly
overlaps the next square creating an undulating effect.
Our perspective appears aerial, as though looking down
at the ocean from a jet. Far below, we see what could
be long rolling swells extending in all directions to
a circular chain of small islands. In the centre there
is only a vast expanse of blue.
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It’s February 19th, the day after my birthday.
I see the gallery has been busy; the collage suddenly
shares its space with a flat leather bench. I don’t
like other people making changes to my artworks, especially
installations. But I think I’m OK with it. I’m
simultaneously surprised, delighted, and annoyed to
see someone occupying the bench. I hesitate in the doorway,
thinking he’ll leave, his moment of contemplation
or reverie broken by my intrusion. I linger a bit, but
he doesn’t move, doesn’t even glance at
me. So I perch on the far edge of the bench and I write
these thoughts. I wonder if he is irritated by my brief
bursts of assured scribbling?
He sits here for an unusually long time. Mystified
by his apparent immersion in my work I ask him, when
he finally gets up to go, what he thinks about this
artwork (I don’t mention that it is mine). My
question catches him mid-stride, he pauses in the doorway
– half-in-half out - and walks up to the collage.
I am impressed how the map collage dwarfs him; in fact
it pleases me immensely. Discreetly, he ever so lightly
strokes the surface with the back of his hand –
just once. The collage ripples in response. His silence
is long and penetrating, so I stare at his feet. I smile,
snort silently in recognition, he’s wearing white
running shoes! I realise immediately that he isn’t
local, but something of an import, possibly not unlike
myself. Sighing heavily and still looking at the collage
he says quietly and predictably with a North American
accent “homelessness” followed by a lengthy
pause “no permanent place”. No other words
are exchanged between us.
Marjorie Perloff writes: “...what the collage-piece
unravels from the surface of the canvas..., is after
all, the flight coupon we thought we had lost.”
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The collage is taking ever so long to make. It’s
already the day after Boxing Day. I’m restless.
It’s uncomfortably hot.
I’m sitting on a canvas sheet, almost 4 square
metres in size. I made it by sewing the edge of one
length of calico to another of equal length. I’ve
done my best to keep the stitching as flat as possible
with no edges of fabric overlapping, but a ridge is
beginning to form - like a spine. Depending which way
I look at the collage, it’s either a metaphorical
equator or Greenwich mean time. Every stitch between
north and south (or east and west) recounts a fragment
of a story. I think of the numerous historical accounts
written by marine explorers, their tales about discovering
new shipping routes, mapping new coastlines, tragedies
associated with the spice and fur trades, and war and
slavery. Wrapped around a few of the stitches in this
equatorial or meridian backbone are my family’s
stories of migration, dislocation, and my stories of
summer in winter and winter in summer, north and south.
Underneath me is a concrete floor. To make this work
I need to feel the ground beneath me as much as possible.
Besides, the cool concrete floor keep’s the summer
at bay. I shift my position every few minutes because
my legs get in the way or they fall asleep. I cross
one, sometimes both, or tuck them away beneath me. Other
times I stretch my legs straight out in front in front
or I lie on my side. I’ve already done five hours
today, carefully choosing the right colour of blue map
fragment and delicately pasting each square onto the
calico ground. I know my process is collage, but intuitively
on this scale I feel it is closer to painting, there
are so many minute variations in the choice of blue
map fragments. I feel particularly driven today and
am determined to do at least eight hours. There’s
nobody around – it’s Christmas. Except for
the occasional squawking cockatoo all is silent. I’m
so absorbed with the blue,and the stillness of the day
that my mind keeps wandering.
“geography of the land is probably
to a large degree geography of the mind.”
Svetlana Alpers
A picture-map of the world hangs above my childhood
bed. The original map must have been painted in watercolours;
the oceans are translucent currents of cool blues and
warmer turquoises, while the deserts are hot wavering
yellows and orange. The map has a plain white border,
which I imagine keeps Earth from spilling into space.
Different regions are identified through a smattering
of iconic animals and people of different colours in
different dress. I see forests and mountain ranges,
and in some places the kinds of houses in which people
live, including icy igloos, patterned teepees, and mud
huts. I search for a brick house on a hill overlooking
a river, but I can‘t find one. Instead, Canada,
our new home, is a vast, snow-and-tree covered expanse.
Wild fur-bearing animals, such as moose, beavers, wolves
and various kinds of bears, are strung out across the
land. It gives me great satisfaction to associate my
home with these majestic wild animals. I can’t
see anything marking the location of Holland, the country
of my birth. Possibly it is too small to fit one in,
but if there had been room I’m sure it would have
been a windmill. I know then, in my heart, it was not
a Dutch artist who originally painted this map of the
world.
This is a world full of wonder. From the vantage point
of my wooden bed, innumerable journeys take me across
treeless deserts, through thick and thinning clouds,
over polar and tropical seas, and around and around
the North and South Poles. I never get tired of travelling
and I’m always in my own company. Where there
is water I sail a wooden boat with a single red sail.
Standing on my bed I like to trace an awkward route
between Holland, Indonesia, and Canada. I have an Indonesian
grandmother, but have met her only twice. Sometimes
I fantasise being on Java and join my father (age 7),
his little brother, and his mother in the Japanese prisoner
of war camp. I beg Papa to share a memory about his
internment there, but he always says “no”.
He fights back those memories – doesn’t
want to remember because most of them starved or died
from disease and infection. But sometimes he relents
and then he always tells the same two stories, only
ever the same 2 stories. One goes something along the
lines of sticking stuff and on one occasion fruit, far
too rotten to eat, in the exhaust pipes of the Japanese
military jeeps. The thrill was watching this mess come
shooting out when the engines started. I was very afraid
for him even all these years later. What if he had been
caught?
I fear a recurring nightmare. My father is in danger
and I have to save him. I’m running, but masses
of thick tall dark trees always close in. By the time
I get to where I had seen him standing alone on a little
wooden bench in a clearing surrounded by a ring of trees,
he is gone.
On the rare occasion that Papa and I shop together,
he sometimes pauses at small piles of imported exotic
fruit. How bizarre, these foreign fruit look and so
out of place in a country in the grip of -22 degrees
and seventeen feet of snow. He carefully picks up some
variety nameless to me. There is silence. I look at
his beautiful slender fingers, too afraid to look at
his face because I know this routine all too well. I
hold my breath.
The oddly coloured, prickly, or pocked fruit sits cradled
in his cupped hands. Then I see him, and I hate this
vision, of my Papa as a child, absolutely ravenous,
devouring this kind of fruit, also past its prime. I
can only imagine his pain, three years of hunger in
a POW camp in Java. How many of his little friends and
their mothers died around him? Standing there in the
supermarket my chest feels like it will explode with
anger and sadness. I hate war, I hate it, I hate it
all! Faster and louder my heart thumps in my head. I’m
afraid he will hear my panic, but I must be strong for
him. Wil je dit probeeren? he asks.
I can never decline to share an overly bitter or sickly
pungentsweet fruit. I do it out of respect, but secretly
hoping he’ll also share a different Indonesia
story. He never does though, only the story about the
stuff in the exhaust pipe. He never talks about the
years of internment and won’t even share his memories
with Mama.
It’s too hot. The polymer binder keeps stiffening
my brush. My sweat mingles with a few tears. Papa, Indonesia
and the picture map I loved so much melt away. I’m
having trouble piecing together the western shore of
an island. I keep searching in the box for an appropriate
piece of map, but I can’t find one. I put this
island aside and start afresh this time beginning with
a western edge.
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A strike of the match. I don’t smoke, but I’m
nervous - even though I try to convince myself that
I’m not. My excuse for lighting up is that life
is so incredibly healthy up here that I just need to
do something unhealthy. My other excuse is that smoke
keeps mosquitoes at bay. At dawn this morning they were
hitting the tent collectively sounding like rain. I
was fooled into wearing my raincoat before emerging
from my nest. Yesterday, in one slap of the hand, we
counted 121 mosquitoes! I heard from a local pilot about
a man and woman who died last year after their canoe
capsized. They died from exposure to blood sucking insects,
not lack of food. I’m reminded of the time 11
years ago in the western Arctic when I got lost and
went to the edge of madness screaming and running in
circles from despair because the bugs were so bad when
the wind suddenly dropped. I had to keep my hands in
my pockets and could not read my map. I temporary derangement
really scared me more than anything. I have learned.
To survive here requires presence of mind.
I sit quietly in the doorway of my canvas home - matching
the stillness of an Arctic summer day. There’s
not a breath of wind or any movement. My outstretched
legs rest on gravel and lichen. I feel a small sharp
rock protruding through the tent floor and shift slightly
to the right.
I hardly draw on the cigarettes, but I keep lighting
them - almost one after the other - as each white tube
falls away. My ears are pricked and I constantly scan
around me and across to the breathtakingly beautiful
iceberg and island studded expanse of emerald blue Arctic
Ocean sweeping east towards Greenland. From the helicopter
I can sometimes make out distant shores. I love this
country. It is painfully beautiful. And yet I cannot
trust it.
I’m almost too afraid to move. I feel silly.
It’s such a gorgeous summer afternoon, but I mustn’t
be disarmed by it. I have every reason to be afraid.
I don’t look at the black shaft of the gun, but
as much as I hate guns the cold steel against my thigh
is reassuring. For a moment I wish for safety on one
of those islands, out there in the icy blue ocean, but
that’s no help. There are polar bears out there
too. I chastise myself for my fear, but the memory of
being charged by a grizzly bear ten years ago on a similar
geological expedition is still fresh in my blood. And
speaking of blood, only 12 hours ago I felt the same
again. Where did that polar bear go? The pilot woke
up the camp with his blood-curdling cry at 1:00. And
the bastards, they’ve left me alone in a camp
with 2 freezers of meat and I have my period.
One frustration leads to another. I can’t find
a square of the darkest blue and I really need a dark
anchoring point in this last corner of this island.
Nine tenths of the collaged map is completed. It’s
taken 170 topographic maps cut into 2cm squares. I think
back to the previous two years and how every time I
felt terribly out of sync with being in Australia, fragmented
by the distance between here and my loved ones in Canada
or Holland, I tore or cut maps into these little squares.
Then I’d weave them back together to form a new
cloth, a new kind identity, an imaginary land.
Mygrations is created from maps printed in 1944 for
wartime distribution in Australia. These maps have caused
me to reflect on tensions between different parts of
the world and my utopian desire for no more war. I look
at the large circle of broken islands that has emerged
at the periphery of the collage and I wish people would
realise the many different ways in which we are all
linked. The islands cause me to think back to my experiences
of working with international artists in the National
Gallery of Australia’s 1996 exhibition, Islands.
I delighted in exercising my French with Annette Messager
and Christian Boltanski. I found it remarkable how at
ease Boltanski was in developing a new work in situ
in response to a new space. I made friends with Montien
Boonma from Thailand and had my first taste of Buddhist
principles in contemporary arts and the sensory richness
of painting and building a herb and spice encrusted
temple-like installation space. I recoiled in horror
at the first hand experiences of Chilean artist Alfredo
Jaar and his absolute disillusionment with the West
and the United Nations for not preventing the highly
preventable genocide in Rwanda. I imagined the thoughts
of German artist Joseph Beuys whose wartime experiences
haunted the felt pieces we hung in the gallery as part
of the exhibition. Yes, good art transcends language
barriers, it lives on beyond death, stitches together
like-minded people and helps us to locate meaning or
wonder in a very complex world.
These thoughts about interconnections between people
and places were manifest also in the isolation I experienced
constructing the collage during the Christmas holidays
while being separated from my friends and family. In
the centre of my map there is only a vast expanse of
blue. Here, not even the tiniest island emerges on which
to locate a sense of place. It is this void, this internal
loneliness, the gentleman sitting in front of my collage,
also a foreigner, picked up on. I think of Michel Foucault’s
words “instead of finding reassurances...one is
forced to advance beyond familiar territory...”
The intensity with which I approached the cutting and
pasting recalls my immersion in the colouring of geological
maps in the Canadian Arctic field camps so many years
before. The process of making the collage is about escaping
reality through memory and weaving together fragments
of the past, present, and future, and finding something
lost, something new, or hidden. In the Arctic the intense
and precise colouring of geological maps distracted
me from thinking about nearby roaming bears, feeling
the cold, an intense heat wave with smoke from the south
or the bloody hordes of mosquitoes.
I often look at a postcard reproduction of Jan Vermeer’s
painting of Woman Reading A Letter. In my years working
along the fringes of arctic shores I yearned so much
for the arrival of the mailbag dropped off by a plane
every three weeks. I loved to receive a letter, someone
else’s thoughts I could absorb slowly, over and
over, and in my own time. I think back to the thousands
of letters I have written in the quiet moments of endless
daylight days when icebergs twinkle in the distance,
the ocean lies as flat as a mirror with islands and
clouds impossible to separate from their reflections,
and the momentary splash of a narwhale slicing through
still waters spouting air. I try to explain in my letters
what the silence is like and of my near silent excursions
in the canoe, loving the feel of my hands slice the
paddle through freezing water and drinking in the beauty
of ocean, lake, or river floors. I try to explain in
my letters what it is like to be alone all day, in the
so-called middle of nowhere, to work with geologists
who also love their work and talk about the earth in
billions of years. In my letters I describe my joy at
walking endless shorelines, in the tracks of bears and
wolves and caribou, and at the interface of land and
water where the Inuit people still draw sustenance.
In my letters I share daily menus and my experiments
with cooking in bush camp conditions. But I know that
unless you’ve been to that kind of place - where
you are humbled by beauty, silence, the spirit of all
things, and your cognisance of not being invincible
- you won’t understand my letters because they
are slow and detailed.
I wonder from which port Vermeer’s painted letter
was sent forth? I live in Fremantle because I love the
ocean and the excitement of a port full of international
arrivals and the smoke and blasts of departures. I try
to connect ships with countries of origin and cargo
with destinations. Memories of docks in Rotterdam, London,
Montreal, New York, Sydney and Port Hedland flood forth.
I think also about human cargo and my friend’s
escape from Vietnam, her narrow escape from pirates
and coming here to absorb the ambiguous identity of
“refugee.” I wonder if that identity ever
ends.
I treasure a book handed down to me by my grandmother.
It was written by a co-survivor of the prisoner of war
camp in Java which my father also endured for almost
three years. In it is a photo of my grandmother. It’s
hard to make out, but I think she’s wearing a
floral patterned dress. And I always meant to ask, but
forgot and then it was too late, what my father remembered
of his journey from war-ravaged Indonesia to war-ravaged
Holland and what kind of ship it was that carried him
across so many lengths of ocean. Perhaps there lies
a clue in his last drawing - a ship - which I had asked
him to sketch when we both knew he was dying. Sadly
I’ve lost the drawing, but I remember it through
the making of this collage.
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