Rested Fibres - Textile Scrap Find July 2024

Along the ridge by the hospital uphill I found this artefact half buried. Though I couldn’t subtly recover it in the company of fellow walkers (textile callings can be difficult to explain) I took a photo, and I dreamed of sandstone and rested fibres that night. On leave the next morning my sister and I traced my steps, using the GPS data from the photo as a rough guide. We found it, joyfully extracted it, bagged it, and my sister kept it to mind – it was a doubtful sell to keep it on the ward. With care, my sister hosed it down, dried it and gave it to me today.

There's a notion of resilience - the reprieve of the treasure hunt, and the stubborn maintenance of composition despite erosion. It holds questions– who left it? Who had it last? How long had it been? In the narrow reserve, prying the cloth away from the dirt, I’ll remember happily and gratefully this time, process and future addition to Hold Hands Spring Tide.

Air China Boeing 747-89L Arrival into Canberra Airport (YSCB)

With a SW wind, we anticipated a landing on runway 17, pulled to the side of Majura Road, roughly aligned with the VOR/DME. The Air China Boeing 747-89L was due in at 3:16 pm, I had time for practice - the sheep from the adjacent paddock firmly unmoved by the arriving jets. As I reviewed exposure, the ATIS declared a runway change, and we relocated to the 35 threshold. When the 747 joined up, six minutes out, we navigated the collapsed rabbit holes and long grass towards the bald patch in the middle of the field. From this position, I can see a clear run north to south. Clear skies. Back to the sun. We saw her bright and slow. More cars pulled in. A few people climbed on car roofs for a view over the barrier. Cameras. Kids. Then it was on us, great and clumsy, slow overhead and late to meet the runway. Pilots joke that if you pay for the use of the runway, you might as well use all of it. Smoke from the brake system curled around and the wind and exhaust carried it away. B-2480 began towards the bay.

Artist Book: Hold Hands Spring Tide (Progress I)

On an overcast day, full carpark, sea beaten against the brow of the cove, awnings erected and towels deployed. It was the end of January and close to the end of the school holidays. The spring tide was rushing out as we went in and I wanted to dive, motivated to flatten under and squint at little more than the sandy tidal fabrications lost easily from above. But even in the shallows, I was reluctant - indeed, I had once been swept away. So, in searching for reassurance, I held my partner's offered hand, and keeping hold, held my breath and sunk to my knees, the turbulent water over my head. Having fitted a mask, I looked through cloudy glass; seaweed, split light, coastal particles. Sand established in mounds reconstituted once, twice, thrice by the current, then, a new breath of air.

Over the course of my shallow divings, my digits folded in a tight grip that was decidedly matched by he. I waded and surveyed, glad. And I remember thinking how childlike it was, holding hands in the rough water, and yet so sensible, maintaining simple contact in a precarious environment. I thought about intrepid otters holding hands in frigid Alaskan waters, staying as a group in the dark as they slept.

The holding of hands is a historic gesture. The fede motif found on ancient rings (depicting two clasped hands joined at the bezel) represents the joining of the hands in marriage, a practice known in ancient Rome as 'dextrarum iunctio'.[1] However, the origin of the act of holding hands (and its inception as a subject in art), is largely unknown and likely evolved organically early on as a practical means to convey closeness or enact safety beyond the limits of speech.

To me, the equivalent to the allaying of fear in the rough spring tide is the metaphorical action of reaching and answer. When I started making my book for the Libris Award, my mind returned to the sea and the action of searching and, having reached, finding fortitude.

Hold Hands Spring Tide is an artist book I am developing for the Libris Award that builds on several previous artistic projects. These projects, (Worry Stitch, Sleep, LEVO etc) are all the result of artistic exercises initiated to diffuse personal anxiety and create a soothing state of mind in the face of mental disquiet. Like these previous iterations, it is the process of HHST that is the most fundamental. In responding to and instigating predominantly textile processes, collapsing my own psychology and experiences into physical form, I am reaching out to a familiar tether with the intent to invoke a shield against manifestations of anxiety and depression.

In addition, by giving my poor psychological experiences concrete form, I hope to formulate the potential to make their own narrative and forge connections with prospective readers. By allowing my stream-of-conscious thoughts or observances to spill over into an artist book format, they begin to operate productively outside of the self, questioning or valuing the role of mental illness in the act of artistic creation, healing and connection.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

References:

[1] https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/H_1959-0209-40