Twenty years ago my Father was killed fighting a bushfire on the neighbour's farm. It was a bad death. Suddenly he was gone. There were no farewells. My youngest brother was driving the utility that he fell off; my sister and brother-in-law the ambulance that found him. There was grief and guilt. We were traumatised. In the week following, as we waited out the autopsy, my mother, four siblings and I sat around the dining table and told stories, sometimes for several hours at a time. With this came the realisation that we had not only lost the towering, pivotal figure in our lives, but also our chief storyteller, and his memories. No longer were we going to hear, "Do you remember old Clem? He used to live..." With our own storytelling we sought to join individual, fragmented memories, and make them into a collective whole, not only to re-establish our links with one another but also to give us a sense of continuity with which to move forward. Our memories helped to heal us.[1]

My Honour’s exegesis began with this statement that still holds true. Only now, there is added resonance. Recently, my aged Mother eked out life after a major stroke, and eventually could no longer remember my Father, her life-long love.[2] Memory today seems doubly important to who we are.[3]

In my art practice, I have long focused on personal, family memories and on a deeply held knowledge of the natural materials and familiar locations caught up in those stories. I have grappled with the questions ‘How is memory informed by place and time?’ and ‘How does memory contribute to the way I understand myself?’

From familial people and places, there was a natural progression to examine unfamiliar relationships. In order to explore different possibilities, the studio component of the Master’s degree was structured around four art residency programs - at Guildford Grammar School in Perth, at Mullewa in the mid-west of Western Australia, Albany in the south-west of Western Australia, and finally in Mildura, Victoria. In these places, three key concepts informed the art practice: collective memory, place and collaboration.

This exhibition showcases the direct, active and intuitive encounters that were at the core of the four residencies.

[1] Valdene Diprose, "The Matter of Memory - Honour's Exegesis," (University of Western Australia, 2013).

[2] Luis Buñuel suggests we only have to lose our memory in “bits and pieces to realise that memory is what makes our lives.” cited in Andreas Huyssen, Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory (Stanford California: Stanford University Press, 2003). 120-1.

[3] Allan Megill, Historical Knowledge, Historical Error: A Contemporary Guide to Practice (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press 2007). 43. Megill suggests that Alzheimer’s disease is the most dreaded of all “health horrors”.