Listening to Stones Part II

3 hour performance with sledgehammer and 1.5 Tonnes of 19th Century hand cut bluestone, 2015

I want to feel the foundations of Melbourne under my hammer. This bluestone was most likely quarried only a few kms from the performance location, spending most of its life buried deep underground and briefly appearing as walls in a 19th Century building in Collingwood. In the lead up to this performance I am compelled by the implications of postcolonial history, past and present labour relations, gender, and time.

How powerful it must feel, to smash stone.

Listening to Stones Part I
Edition of 10 woodblock prints with cassette tapes, 2014. Installation as part of ‘Love/City Festival’ curated by Arie Rain Glorie, using straw bales, cassette deck, stool and headphones.

“Grief is different. Grief has no distance. Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life.” ― Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

Exhibited in a Warehouse overlooking bustling Swanston Street, and opening a kind-of psychic mainline to New Zealand, Listening to Stones wove field recordings collected over the past 5 years into an intimate cassette tape woodblock edition.

This work was for the people I have lost, and for the people I am still hanging onto.