This is an image of the Black Wattle roots system I have surfaces from Wurundjeri Country near Darebin Creek. It was grown on land I own and planted from a sapling I purchased for Nangak Tamboree. I had to move the tree for electrical wire reasons I am thinking through the strong pull to not only lob the tree but to surface this root system and understand better its life force, social instincts, and energy sources for Life that we dont see, how it is as large and wide brimmed as its branches. I didn’t do it all justice. I was inspired to look at the life of the tree when thinking about communication from yolnu artists from Yirrkala, that the materials for making are all around us and my western thinking - even the upturned root is again a sign of western thinking: extraction and display. I am trying to sit with that tension: to dissect this uprooting, both as a physical act and as a metaphor. In doing so, I reflect on broader histories of displacement and dispossession, and what it means to be separated from our roots in whole and in part.
I have begun very simple experiments in ink, charcoal and watercolour to expand my thinking around this work and to read further in regards to to the tension of settler and First Peoples structures in land, life systems and waterways, this also includes reading poetry and philosophy.
