Acknowledgement
“One Hand Cannot Clap Alone” exhibited upon unceded Gadigal country at Comber St Studios from the 10th-17th April 2024 and was conceptualised on Wallumedegal and Wangal land.
We extend our respect to traditional Elders of this land past, present and leaders emerging and extend our continuous respect to all First Nations people in their ongoing spiritual connection and care for Country. Care for Country demands a collaborative and bilateral relationship to the landscape and all those living upon it.
The curators of this show stand in direct solidarity with the civilians of Palestine and in opposition to the war crimes inflicted by Israel and its allies upon the people of Gaza and the West Bank. We refuse to turn a blind eye to these atrocities.
There is a need to respond to these matters and acknowledge the roots of this violence are neither shallow nor young. We bear witness to horrors unfolding in Gaza as the culmination of decades of colonial and genocidal strategies, and as participants, custodians and attendees of creative spaces, we must vocalise our support.
We are deeply disappointed by the silence of the Australian cultural sector that has chosen neutrality throughout this unfolding tragedy.
Acknowledging the resilience of Palestinians amidst adversity and the unwavering global solidarity is imperative when discussing collaboration, familial ties, and collective action.
We call for an immediate ceasefire and an end to the occupation of Palestine.
Curatorial Statement
“One Hand Cannot Clap Alone” was a gathering, a sharing of burdens, a responsibility, a dedication and a veneration to a continuum of interconnected experiences and overlapping timelines inviting viewers to consider who and what connects our past to our future/s.
“One Hand Cannot Clap Alone” platformed the works of 18 artists and groups whose artistic practices are attentive to familial networks, ancestral memory and collective making that actively counter the notion of the auteur. Exploring personal legacies, heirlooms, and familial mythologies, the artists in the exhibition utilise film, textiles, sound, sculpture and jewellery to push through mixed feelings of joy, grief, love and hope.
Dissolving boundaries between artist and muse to form a common labour of love, in this interdependent symphony we witness a convergence of past, present, and the dreams of a future yet to arrive. For an artist - like the clapping handrequires a counterpart, be it a muse, a collaborator, or the collective whispers of generations past. Together they create a resonance far more profound than solitary applause.
Grounding this show was the exploration and provocation of ethics surrounding non-exploitative communal labour and a call towards opacity in the arts when approaching topics of grief and lamentation. Furthermore, a question is presented to the audience: how can we move beyond the footnote when acknowledging those who help us get here.
Curated by Lachlan Bell with assistance from Courtney Bowd, the show featured archival and contemporary work from emerging and established artists connected to Warrane/Sydney and to the University of New South Wales.
String Club
Improvised, meandering, time-altering, embodying, 2024
Collaborators: Astrid Bell, David Suyasa, Kata Szász-Komlós
Grounded by an ethos of improvisational friendship and serendipity, String Club began on Gadigal & Wangal Country as an exercise in group learning through friendship, play and a deep love of strings. Improvised steps and mis-steps across strewn instruments or whatever is within reach.
Members Kata Szász, David Suyasa and Astrid Bell meet as weekly as they can in a living room, but it could happen in any room of any house. The club becomes something new in each iteration; support, slowness, lap steels, strings, humming loops, simple bass, repetitions, fondness, one offs, love and flukes.
Everyone is a member of String Club.
Perekolmik
Joiko, Ketramas (Spinning) & Maasikamuusika (Strawberry Music)
Collaborators: Kieran Scott, Siiri Iismaa, Ella Scott
Siiri and Kieran have led the local Sydney-Estonian ensemble ‘Lõke (The Flame)’ for over 20 years and started bringing their daughter, Ella, along to their rehearsals when she was one year old. Singing together remains a part of the daily rhythms of life for the Iismaa-Scott family, however, this is the first time performing as a trio in public and under the name of ‘Perekolmik’ which translates in Estonian to Family Trio. They live together on Gadigal and Bidjigal Country, Eastgardens.
The following songs were performed on 10th April at the opening of the exhibition ‘One Hand Cannot Clap Alone’:
‘Joiko’ is a Karelian shepherd’s call that was part of Lõke’s repertoire for many years, so it has an air of nostalgia about it for ‘Perekolmik’ and is a call to their fond memories of singing together in the past.
In ‘Ketramas’, a mother spins yarn from wool, her daughter notices this process of creation and expresses a desire to learn. Her father then buys her a spindle to facilitate this sharing of knowledge between generations.
‘Maasikamuusika’ tells the story of dreaming about picking strawberries in the forest in summer only to wake up to the realisation that it is winter and snowing outside. There is a sense of optimism and hope as the singing strawberry music is heard murmuring underneath the snow, reflecting the promise of a bright future.
‘Perekolmik’ have wanted to sing this together for 15 years but have never had the opportunity to do so, now realising this past dream.
Marleena Oudomvilay
A Tree That We Assemble, 2024
Posca chalk marker on glass Collaborator: Everyone
‘A Tree That We Assemble’ was an ephemeral work that blurred lines between visitor and participant.
A shared artwork created over the duration of the exhibition, it spanned the window space of Comber Street Studios affording attendees to draw out their own chosen “family” trees in chalk marker.
An intertwined, informal artwork - three prompts were given to connect participants to the people that they admire, love and wish to meet one day. It provided a window outwards and inwards.
Courtney Bowd
Recommended Readings, ongoing
Collection of texts, readings, rescued bookstand
The front room of this space invited all to sit down, rest and read from a collection of texts borrowed from the private libraries of the participating artists. These included:
‘2020 Fine Arts Honours Zine’ by the UNSW Art & Design Fine Arts Honours Cohort (2020)
‘Against Disappearance: Essays on Memory’ edited by Leah Jing McIntosh & Adolfo Aranjuez (2022)
‘Documenta Fifteen Handbook’ by Ruangrupa (2022)
‘errant form’ edited by Claire Angelica & Niko Plaskasovitis (2023)
‘Gregory's Sydney & Blue Mountains Street Directory 75th edition’ by Gregory’s (2011)
‘Japanese Death Poems’ compiled by Yoel Hoffmann (1986)
‘Lumbung, Commons and Community Art. A Conversation on the Behind-the-Scenes of documenta fifteen’ by Florian Cramer & Simon Kentgens
‘Making Matters: A Vocabulary for Collective Arts’ edited by Janneke Wesseling, Florian Cramer, Anja Groten, Klaas Kuitenbrouwer, Pia Louwerens, Marie-José Sondeijker (2022)
‘Root & Branch: Essays on Inheritance’ by Eda Gunaydin (2022)
‘The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction’ by Ursula K. Le Guin (1986)
‘The Permaculture City: Regenerative Design for Urban, Suburban, and Town Resilience’ by Toby Hemenway (2015)
‘The Poetics of Space’ by Gaston Bachelard (1958)
‘What’s Mine is Yours’ by Monica Rani Rudhar (2023)
‘Woven: First Nation poetic conversations from the Fair Trade project’ by Red Room Poetry (2024)
Michail Mathioudakis
Collaborative Zine-Making, 2024
Collaborators: Marleena Oudomvilay, Mei Lin Meyers, Nicole Cadelina, Athina Mathioudakis, William Shi
On the 14th April 2024, Michail facilitated a hands-on zine-making workshop where, responding to prompts, participants explored the importance of communal storytelling in the zine community.
The workshop provided a safe space where participants were encouraged to share their work, stories and collaborate openly and non-judgmentally.
A selection of the final zines and personal reflections were featured within the ‘Recommended Readings’ library and have been reproduced in this booklet.
Leila Frijat
Passing through and along, 2024
Framed A3 cyanotypes, single-channel video (57s)
Collaborator: Eman Al Khawaldeh
Thank you to: Gorman and Ainslie Arts Centre, Kirsten Biven, Hugh Withycombe, Canberra Makerspace - Make, Hack, Void
‘Passing through and along’ is a hand-animated video that explores the malleability of stories. The animation was generated by developing an audio-reactive program, where an audio recording of my mothers voice modulates the speed and shape of an amorphous form. This form was then translated into a 640-frame animation, with the sensitivity of the cyanotype process resulting in variability in each frame.
The audio draws upon a conversation between my mother and I, where she drew her life with a single line and we read our futures in the sediments of coffee grounds. As this story is passed through different mediums,the story itself begins to change as the original audio falls out of sync with the final animation.
It prompts viewers to contemplate how stories morph as they are passed along and reinterpreted by different people in the future, drawing new meanings and lessons.
Megan Tan
something_to_be_understood_ when_older, 2022-2025
Single-channel sound (30m), bound document 35.5 cm x 24.1 cm
Collaborators: Jennifer Fong, Alex Liao, Dominic Yau, Tiffany Yue Goh, Leon Truong & Madam Leong
Megan, being monolingual with no knowledge of Chinese language, has decided to learn Cantonese — her mother’s first language.
She has tasked Madam Leong with answering some questions in Cantonese. The resulting exchange was recorded as an audio file. Megan will not be attempting to interpret the Cantonese components of the recording until after the 5th December 2025 (Megan’s 30th birthday), when she speculatively will have sufficient grasp of the language.
Five Australian-born friends of the artist with Cantonese backgrounds have listened to the audio file and attempted to interpret it. These contributions have been compiled and printed by a third party.
Their contents are open to all but must be kept secret from the artist.
Hannah McKellar
Road to Nowhere: Travelog Maps, 2023 - ongoing
Embroidered cotton thread on linen, ink and watercolour on Fabriano watercolour paper
Collaborator: Ian McKellar
In the face of advancing technology and the waning of traditional skills, Ian and Hannah McKellar, a Father-Daughter duo, pose the question: What is lost when these skills fade away?
Their ongoing project, 'Road to Nowhere: Travelog Maps', explores the diminishing materiality and decline of crafts. Ian, a former cartographic draftsman, once meticulously drew maps by hand for publications Travelog and Gregory’s.
Despite the trade's technological transformation and physical maps giving way to digital, the duo breathes new life into them through drawing and embroidery. This process revitalises not only the maps but also fosters connections. 'Road to Nowhere: Travelog Maps' encapsulates the essence of loss and the enduring power of human connection, emphasising the importance of collaboration and preserving traditional skills amid an ever-changing world.
Tamara Elkins
Fins, Fangs and Feathers, 2023
Single-channel digital video (17m 26s), textile costumes
‘Fins Fangs and Feathers’ is a three-channel video in which the artist performs gestures from family photographs of herself, her mother and grandmother.
Filmed in slow motion the same choreography of gestures is performed wearing a differing costume in each channel. Each costume references a stage of life; maiden, mother or crone. The gestures from these photos are unconsciously performed and come out of ritualised behaviour.
Rituals, much like spells, come from an intention paired with action, often performed until the original intention is forgotten or obscured. In re-enacting the gestures from her matrilineal line the artist is both reinforcing her identity within a family history and time travelling to a past, present and future version of herself.
Karlina Mitchell
The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order, 2023
Woven ibe of voivoi (Pandanus caricosus), photo rag, kula, 50 cm x 100 cm
Collaborators: Nakiti & Aunty
Some memories are just feelings or knowings. I remember lying on an ibe (a Fijian woven mat) as a child, under a mango tree, my grandmother fanning my face.
My mother always laughing, my aunty’s hands kneading dough. Their laughter, their singing and the woven histories shared on the ibe. These memories and my current life are interwoven here, represented by a photo of the place I call home, Ngurra of the Dharug and Gundungurra peoples.
Mei Lin Meyers
Patterns for gentleness, 2024
Baking paper, printed A5 zine, calico, stuffing
Sewingbadgeifreceivedbyemail.mp4, 2024
Single-channel digital video (2m 54s), iPad Collaborator: Gwendoline Meyers
‘Patterns for gentleness’ is an ongoing zine-based project with an ear towards the foldable/pocket-sized sewing pattern. The pattern expands inwards and outwards, changes shape, and is a recipe for warmth.
This work is an invitation towards craftiness and play - to sew a piece of ginger, to gift, to hold and to be held.
Grandma and I collaborated in following and drawing the contours of ginger, giggling along the way. The video documents this collaboration which was very ‘school holidays’ in its joyfulness.
Aksel Haagensen
Vanaemale külla / Going Home, 2020
Single-channel digital video (10m 35s)
Collaborator: Vella Pihlak
My grandmother was 8 years old when she escaped Estonia in 1944. She now lives in Australia. I was born in Australia and moved to Estonia when I was 8 years old.
I recently visited my grandmother as well as the country of my birth, which is simultaneously home and foreign to both me and my grandmother.
Although it can be assumed that my grandmother and I are in polar opposite roles in the film - the elder born in Estonia, who moved to Australia, and the younger born in Australia, who moved to Estonia - I think we are rather similar.
Both Australian expatriates, both artists, both quiet and unassuming. The historical context and the catastrophes of the present remain in the background, but it's still very much a case of 'we' and 'we'. A film about a grandson who went home to visit his grandmother.
Vella Pihlak
Untitled (Senta Silla: Banksia, Koala, Kookaburra), c.1980
Screen printed cotton yardage and constructed garments, felled birch heartwood suspended by paracord Kihnu südamepaelad (lovebraids)
300 cm x 170 cm
Collaborators: Lachlan Bell, Mai Lehtsalu, Malle Lehtsalu, Megan Hanson
These screen-printed textiles were designed by Vella in 1980 in her home studio in Turramurra. Sold under her pseudonym “Senta Silla” to distinguish her textiles design work from her personal artistic practice, the prints reflect the influence of Finnish textiles, clothing, and home furnishings company Marimekko. There were three sets of fabrics, each in three different colour combinations “Kookaburra”, “Banksia” and “Koala”.
Garments using these prints featured on the Kevad (Spring) cover of the 1991 edition of Triinu Magazine, a quarterly Estonian women’s magazine.
In 2020, Vella’s grandson Aksel Haagensen visited Sydney and collected yardage of this fabric to exhibit back in Estonia at Tartu Art House in 2021, and later expanded upon it in a series titled “Patterns by Grandmother and Grandchild” exhibited at Pärnu Artists House in 2022. The stylised kookaburras and banksias had arrived 78 years after the frantic escape, back to Estonia in their original form where they accompanied Aksel’s reproductions of the patterns of his childhood.
Olivia Reily
Healing Warraroon Reserve, 2023
Various eucalyptus (maamoul moulds), local clays
Collaborators: Aunty Amanda Reynolds, Aunty Mary Goslett, Uncle Noel Butler, Alex Veddovi-McCaughan, Karam Hussein, Bridget Kennedy, Luke Torrevillas, Emma Peters, Charles Peters, Violet Peters, Annabelle Lewer-Fletcher, Thomas Whelan, Ani Reily, Louise Reily, Julia Sniatynskyj, Alexandra Reily, Patrick Reily, Bridey Martin, Jessica Kim, Brianna Gadeley, Lachlan Bell, Kirsten Felice, Georgia Wiggins, Marcus John, Kim Kofod, Kristen Langlois, Marc Cottee, Karen Weiss ~ This is not a comprehensive list but an acknowledgement of the people who helped Heal Warraroon. Whether through their input, guidance, support, collaboration or direct care and attendance at the gathering. I am deeply thankful for their care and time.
Dadirri - Indigenous concept translating to ‘deep listening with respect’.
‘Healing Warraroon Reserve’ is site-specific to bushland in Lane Cove Council where a section of trees have deliberately been poisoned.
Made out of reclaimed native timber, these press-moulds were activated during a gathering to heal the site through craft and ritual on the 19th November, 2023. The motifs reference the creatures and plants in the area. Local clays that absorb toxins from contaminants and are nutrient rich were used to create multiples of ephemeral talismans. These were placed around the pathway near the trees, symbolising the interconnectedness of all living things.
The act of repetition of forming and then placing each talisman on the ground acknowledges the wrongdoing that occurred when the trees were poisoned, encouraging reciprocity between caring for land and caring for self.
In gratitude I would especially like to acknowledge Aunty Mary Goslett for teaching me about Dadirri and Aunty Amanda Reynolds who both provided guidance to this project.
Lachlan Bell
Nordic Sling, 1970-84 - ongoing
Gifted sheeps wool, eucalyptus, salvaged calsil brick and cross-stitched pillow covers, dimensions variable
Collaborators: Olivia Reily, Mai Lehtsalu, Tiina Lehtsalu, Inda Treiberg, Maie Barrow
‘Nordic Sling’ provided a resting space for visitors centred around a Nordic whipcord braid. On each of the brick seats rested four cross-stitched cushion covers by Mai Lehtsalu, Tiina Lehtsalu, and Inda Treiberg. Over the duration of the show, a slinging braid grew and lengthened over time, in a constant state of making and unmaking.
Olev Muska
Küü-ii - the Estonian Australian bi-monthly magazine, 1988
Acrylic on canvas, 78 cm x 103.5 cm
Magazines and scanned reproductions
Collaborators: Juhan Lübek, Lembit Suur, Ingrid Slamer, Doria Kay Tensing, Michael Payne, Jaak Peedo, Anni Meister, Arno Muska, Mick Tartu, Eva Ranniko, Taimi Lübek, Peeter Martinson, Mai Lehtsalu, Lachlan Bell
Painted for the art exhibition at ESTO'88 Melbourne, the 5th Estonian World Festival and the first at which a sizable cohort from Soviet Estonia attended.
‘Küü-ii’ was a bi-lingual bi-monthly magazine published from 1980 to 1983 and created as a response to the comparatively narrow scope of the Australian weekly Estonian newspaper 'Meie Kodu' ('Our Home') that was established in 1949 by and for WWII refugees and their families.
Premised on a sense of fun and irreverence, accessibility and contemporary cultural relevance, Küü-ii featured three levels of Estonian language tuition, lots of visuals and cartoons, current trends in both Soviet and emigré Estonian culture, recipes and more. In the spirit of multiculturalism of the time, it was an attempt to reach out to the wider Australian community.
The colourful covers were silk-screen printed separately and were often seen drying, pegged to a long line that stretched from the front door to the rear through a terrace home in Wigram Rd, Glebe. The painting depicts the logo, all volumes of the magazine and the editorial board.
Kiri-uu - Estonian singers, 1988
Acrylic on canvas, 78 cm x 103.5 cm
CDs, Vinyl covers, publications and ephemera
Collaborators: Chris Jaques, Ene Juurma, Anni Meister, Ilmar Midri, Juhan Palm-Peipman, Mick Tartu, Gunnel
Karlsson, Ingrid Silvéus, Ingrid Slamer, Lembit Suur, Vivien
Valk, Russell Pilling, Olev Salasoo, Graham Harvey, Arno Muska, Victor Verhelst, Nana Esi, Fergus Clark, Ziggy
Devriendt, Christopher Bonato, Robert Nikolajev, Natalie
Mets and Ats Luik, Frotee, Veljo Tormis
Painted for the art exhibition at ESTO'88 Melbourne, the 5th Estonian World Festival, the artwork depicts the logo and the original line-up of the group at their debut performance in 1986.
Kiri-uu was a small choir formed in 1986 in Sydney by second generation expatriates Anni Meister and Olev Muska to explore modern Estonian folk song, particularly through the work of the giant of Estonian choral composition, Veljo Tormis.
‘Kiri-uu’ is an onomatopoeia that imitates a creaking wooden swing in the wind: 'creak-whoosh' originating from Veljo’s arrangement of a lament in the form of a traditional Estonian swing song ‘The swing yearns for gifts’.
What began as merely mucking about progressed into an ultimate distillation as a sophisticated vocal / electronic package. When Kiri-uu successfully held their debut tour of Soviet Estonia in 1989, the project was complete. 36 years on, the rare 1988 debut LP has become a sought after recording internationally.
Tamara Elkins
The Joke, 2023
Single-channel digital video on carpet (1m 15s) 150 cm x 150 cm
Collaborator: Sheila Whitfield
‘The Joke’ is a video portrait of the artist set atop a leaf shaped carpet. In the video the artist is lip-syncing to a recording of her grandmother. The words are advice for using humour to relieve the seriousness of life, said in such a way that they themselves become the humour.
There is an uncanniness as the voice clearly belongs to an older person and as the artist mimics the voice, her face also morphs into the facial patterns of her grandmother. The work is an incantation, a spell cast to step into a future version of yourself.
The placement of this video on a leaf shaped carpet is a reference to her grandmother’s passion for gardening, with the colour matching that of her hallway carpet. The work has also become a memorial, with the artist's grandmother passing away 6 months after the works creation, at the age of 100.
“When you get a nice joke it relieves all the nastiness of the world And there’s not many people have a nice joke
Doesn’t have to be funny Just… Something that you might say
Life is very serious… And…
Every now and again You must have something that you can have… a joke about.”
Megan Morrall
In Loving Memory - 10 Pound, 2019
Lost-wax cast rings: brass and phosphor bronze, wood, printed reproduction on paper (photo album) 8 cm x 13.5 cm (3), 21 cm x 29.7 cm
This work portrays my perception of my Grandfather's life in three stages. I did not know him well, but when he passed, I was compelled to discover what I could through the remnants left behind.
My grandfather was a coal miner in South Yorkshire in the 1960’s, with a wife and three children. During this time, the Australian and British governments introduced the Assisted Passage Migration Scheme in 1945, with the migrants coming to be known as the Ten Pound Poms. Through this scheme and with the generosity of a pen-pal named Stan, my grandfather was able to migrate the family of five from the UK to Australia in 1966.
The burnt cork set in brass portrays the beginning of my familial knowledge, Grandad working as a coal miner in rough conditions due to necessity. Until the end of his life he suffered with emphysema.
The bird set in phosphor bronze represents the family flying across to Australia, one of the earliest flights to do so. Even now my father hand-feeds the magpies & kookaburras that visit his courtyard in Sydney.
Finally, the gum-nuts, also set in phosphor bronze, represent the mirroring of siblings in Australia. My father, one of three siblings, has now fathered three of his own children.
Aarushi Zarthoshtimanesh
Bhool / Bhool, 2023
Single-channel digital video (5m 16s), embroidery on solvy textile, muslin cloth
Collaborators: Family
The artist’s body present in this work traces and retraces the stitched borders along a ‘sudreh’, a religious garment worn by Zoroastrians / Parsis when they come of age. It is made of muslin cloth that hangs on the body as a thin, translucent, communal, shared skin. These scattered bodies live in new homes now, far from lands they were forced to leave behind. The patterns of displacement flush against their skin forms lines of a lost history to trace back to. Lines that locate and dislocate, like conjunctions in a sentence joining the disjointed.
The artist, born and raised in Mumbai, only knows numbers 1 to 10 in the tongue of her great-grandparents. A countdown to nowhere and simultaneously towards another mother tongue that can keep counting further. This work, created on unceded Gadigal land, away from mother tongues shaped like assimilated bodies, there is a renewed spatial and temporal dislocation informing its presence.
The Hindi word ‘bhool (भलू)’ takes root and splits into two translations - ‘forget’ and ‘mistake’. This homonym holds the limbs of one word and the plural souls of dichotomous meanings within it.
Stitched repeatedly onto a water-soluble fabric that mimics the muslin-cotton cloth of the sudreh, this linguistic repetition turns into unmoored thread, lost in its own meaning, as an ocean of wet hands engulfs the ground under it.
In this unanchored swaying, rubbing, retracing- the artist's displaced hands seek to carve out new ports of meaning. To open up the tightly wound seams of this dying culture and revisit all that has been lost to find a new language of buoyancy.
Kata Szász-Komlós
The most beautiful story ever told, will never end, if you listen, 2024
Chalk, paint on found plastic woven board 115 cm x 56 cm
Collaborators: longing, listening, story, walking
Memory is an untrustworthy ally. And yet, for those of us who grew up oceans away from our homelands, it is often a slippery, amorphous and wholly important act in sustaining a sense of self. Recent familial grief and loss has invited a new perspective. Perhaps one cannot trace ancestral knowledge simply from asking probing questions of our origins, especially if the answers are beyond our grasp.
Maybe what we don’t know, the thing that eludes us, can be made anew, woven from abstracts, stories, experiments of thought, a felt sense.
Like a dream who’s visions fade but the feeling remains well into the day and alters us; Everything is in constant communication, whether we can comprehend it or not. The act of walking brings me closer to this.
On the road, my usual neighbourhood jaunts, I find a tall board made of a woven plastic material stretched across a frame like a canvas. When you peer in close you see the countless intersections of thread pulled together to create a substrate. I wait and listen until the intersections show a story waiting to be told, wrangled forth in paint; of unseen guardians reading our story into existence.
Lachlan Bell
Ema haual (Mother’s Grave), 2023
Laser-etched plywood, metal swing sign 74 cm x 74 cm x 64 cm
Collaborators: Ester Hunt, Embi Hunt, Mati Hunt. Pikne Kama, Felix Parker, Lachlan Chang, Linus Aisatullin, Mai Lehtsalu, Malle Lehtsalu, Marie Sepp
This work tells the story of two orphans visiting the church graveyard on Midsummer, who ask their parents to rise and guide them — but they cannot as their bodies have transformed into the land and flowers above. This section of the ‘Ema haual’ regilaul is taken from a 1937 recording in Kolga-Jaani, Estonia. The lyrics have been laser-etched onto pine, resembling a construction site and archeological dig site.
This work continues to be reassembled and deconstructed, initially exhibited at Rookwood Necropolis, it will never fully arrive at its final form.
Translation (by Kait Tamm)
«Oh, we two orphan children, you fatherless, me motherless, on St. John's day let's go to church, a mourning kerchief at our waist, we will wipe each other's eyes, we will stroke each other's heads.
You will go to your father's grave, I will go to my mother's grave: ‹Wake up, dear mama, get up and comb my hair!›
‹I cannot wake up, daughter, my young one, the grass grows over the soil, the meadow hays on the grave, violets over my eyes, globe flowers over my brow›»
Monica Trieu
to never really truly know, to never really truly see the face of what we bury, 2023
Glazed ceramics, watercolour, borrowed tables from Aunty
Oracle bone divination (jiǎgǔ in Hanyu pinyin), an ancient Chinese fortune-telling method of looking for divine guidance and answers, is performed in communication to elders and ancestors through the use of pyromancy and the shoulder blades of oxen or plastrons of turtles.
This work expresses a series of short reflections left in the wake of the passing of a loved one. The work quietly contemplates ideas of the afterlife and reincarnation in Buddhism, an answer unknown of, and the grievances held in the memories of past relationships.
iii. iv. v.
i. Are you a bird in a tree?
ii. Did you receive my gifts well?
iii. Is there an end to the fortune we whisper?
iv. Regret
v. Do you remember me in death?
vi. Do you know the shape of these answers? i. ii.
vi.
Additional Credits
Mai Bell
Levent Can Kaya
Isoldé Elias
Jane Harris
Kudos Committee
Malle Lehtsalu
Lucy Le Masurier nova Milne
Abigail Montgomery
Rory Moy
Pari Ari
Carmen Schieb
Graphic Design by Lachlan Bell & Courtney Bowd
Photography by Lachlan Bell, Liam Black & Levent Dilsiz