Long Transient Feeling

Welcome to my solo exhibition Long Transient Feeling. 

In some ways this was a long time coming, as it marks my first solo show since returning from a gap in my arts practice due to chronic illness. My career started young, with my first solo exhibition at 16 years old and my second at 18 years old in 2012. 2015 was both the year I graduated with my Bachelor of Fine Arts with Honours at QCA and the year I started to become unwell with a mystery illness that affected me both physically and cognitively (later diagnosed as Fibromyalgia). Unfortunately adjusting with this illness and the transition from student to graduate halted my arts practice in its tracks (pun intended). This gap coincided with some big events and developments in global politics and the trajectory of modern society. 2016 marked the rise of Trump as President, populism, misinformation and the far-right. While it seemed the world was becoming increasingly divided and turbulent, the climate crises became more evident with several major ‘natural’ disasters occurring both nationally and overseas. Then we had the pandemic, Black Lives Matter, the invasion of Ukraine – to list a few other significant events. 

As an artist that has always drawn on the socio-political climate around them to create art, I felt like a passive passenger to not be responding to these events in real-time. In a sense I never truly stopped creating during this period, working in illustration and design as I took time to adjust to my new reality and regain confidence in my cognitive abilities. I also still took part in climate protests that I would document in photographs and video with intent to create artwork from at a later point (see For Tomorrow and rotoscoped scenes in Dark Forebodings). Imagery I particularly took notice of was young children hiding from the harsh sun during the protests and how it felt like it could be used as a poignant metaphor for the effects of climate inaction on the futures of children. 

In 2023 I took a leap. I left my job as a multimedia designer and decided it was time to return my focus on my art. It just so happened to coincide with the announcement of an animation music video competition by Pink Floyd to celebrate the 50th anniversary of their album The Dark Side of the Moon (1973). Pink Floyd’s music along with Gerald Scarfe’s animations have had a large influence on my art, and I’ve always had an interest in animation. I embarked on a year-long project to animate my response to three songs from the album. 

The use of the train as a visual metaphor started here with my response to Pink Floyd’s Brain Damage and later: Speak to Me and Eclipse. These animations I would later turn into an interactive installation with a pressable button that would start the trio of animations from the beginning, dressed to look like a train door button. This work I would entitle Dark Forebodings after a lyric from Brain Damage. I exhibited this work in a group exhibition with the See Saw Collective in August 2024 and later received the QRAA Environmental Art Award in December. My animation for Brain Damage has gained over 63k views on Youtube and was also selected for the Spark Animation 2024 festival in Canada and was screened in Vancouver in November. I also used the animations for Speak to Me and Eclipse in a site specific installation for the Adelaide Festival Centre’s Moving Image Program, titled In Tune. During November and December 2024, these animations would play on large screens on the facade of the festival centre’s building. 

After receiving the QRAA award I underwent an intensive concept development period in preparation for this exhibition. I was fortunate enough to receive funding from the Regional Arts Development Fund (RADF) for this time. I decided to build off the central visual metaphor of the train that I had developed with my animations and Dark Forebodings. I find trains interesting as liminal spaces where people from all walks of life can convene but at the same time their minds are likely elsewhere – thinking about where they are heading, the day ahead of them or what they’ll do when they get home, loved ones, doomscrolling… I’ve found through the creation of new works for this exhibition that the metaphor can extend far and to interesting places. 

Several of the artworks in this exhibition were created within the last six months while I have been at residence at the Caboolture Hub Creative Studios – facilitated by the Cultural Activation team of the City of Moreton Bay Council. This space allowed me to experiment on a larger scale with works like Next Stop…, Holding On, and Sit Tight. 

Since returning to my arts practice and re-engaging with the arts community, I have received incredible support and have been able to grasp amazing opportunities available to me by organisations like Flying Arts Alliance and my local council. On a personal level I think the phrase ‘long transient feeling’ has an additional meaning – it extends to my years away and transitioning back into the art world to return my focus on my arts practice. I think some of this feeling unavoidably resides in the self portrait Double Take.