OFF BALANCE represents six months of exploring visual ideas. A year of balance and imbalance that began with a fire evacuation call to abandon my home, closely followed by a nation-wide lockdown and increasing civil unrest around the world. This period of isolation allowed me unprecedented time in my studio home. The unexpected weight of time shifted my creative focus from static imagery to moving narratives drawing on a tender balance between a private and greater universal consciousness.
I began to visit isolated locations in the Southern Tablelands creating site specific videos in the landscape and abandoned interiors of rural buildings. This time of inevitable reflection led me to forgotten memories of my mother’s isolation arriving in Sydney in the 1970’s: isolation from family, language, culture and country.
The disturbing and in many cases understandable civil unrest that has accompanied the pandemic around the world manifested itself as a collection of suburban collaged figures and protesters that began populating my bench top, slowly becoming a diverse crowd of animated actors. Laced leather boots, religious icons, fabric remnants, porcelain doll parts and other my studio archives began to take shape as other covid actors.
