From May to July of this year I will be in a group exhibition at Craft ACT involving JamFactory metal staff, tenants and associates. The exhibition is entitled Small Connections and I responded to the title and made five works.

During the height of the pandemic my family in South Africa attended a wedding that took place in my childhood home garden. I spent tenfold more hours in this garden than I did indoors as a child and through Zoom saw a place once filled with fairies and daydreams, fun and fear now smaller, plainer and so very out of reach. Friends of my fathers who were once bright, charismatic uncles were greyer, out of focus and rounder in the middle. Huge trees with gangly climbable branches, dark little shrubs that acted as fantastical caves were now small, neat and the backdrop in someone else’s wedding photographs. Trees that I climbed and knew the bark impressions of as though they were attached to me where now the setting to new memories in which I did not feature. For this exhibition I wanted to explore how our memories are not constant but are coloured by new experiences and the knowledge that we gain. While they may have formed with our understanding at the time they are shifting, tinted and tethered to our past as well as our future.

Focusing on trees in this garden that each acted as a setting towards plays and fantasies that I created as a child I sought to explore each different tree, including some of its natural characteristics as well as the memories I associated with each one.

Silver Birch - The one that makes you blind

There was a large line of silver birches on the second level of our garden. It cast great big shadows over a lawn where I would practice soccer and catch butterflies with my sister. I used to take the brown seed pods off the tree and throw them into the air above me like confetti. They were all glinty and magical and made me feel like a fairy character - my greatest childhood aspiration.

In an effort to make me stop my parents told me that if the little seeds got in your eyes you could go blind. I became quite scared of these trees with their paperlike bark that I would sometimes tear off. I still loved picking those strange caterpillar like forms and would secretly still find them and scatter them, though I was careful to do it far from my body and with the wind blowing away from me.

Using teardrop elements I wanted to explore that caterpillar like form in this necklace with the scales on the left side showing the pattern that these pods had before being scattered. The gangly mess of branches was duplicated in the silver and a small citrine swings at the bottom representing the lovely colour and twinkle of the confetti like seeds.

Based on the pinkish purple flowering tree that I used to climb and sit in for hours on end. I considered myself an expert tree climber as a child and through years of persistence I had managed to create little footholds on the tree trunk that were rubbed silky smooth by use.

One summers day I created a pulley system from string and a small basket which I used to hoist every single one of my toys into the tree branches. I remember thinking for a second - what if the tree falls down? - it’s holding everything that I love.

The silver petal-like forms mimic the strange paper-like flowers that I would pick off the branches and drop to watch them swirl to the ground.

Crepe Myrtle - The one too close to the dark

As a self appointed tree climbing wizard the second crepe myrtle - a few metres away from my chosen favourite had lanky branches and a perfect split trunk for tiny child accessibility. It sat to the corner of the yard - close to a dark and shaded area that I always imagined held scary shuffley little monsters.

It pained me to not climb this tree but I couldn’t risk the dark area that occasionally glinted gold through dappled sunlight.

Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow - The one that never forgets

My mother constructed our entire three leveled garden from her imagination - she knows what will grow well each season and layers different species in garden beds that act well together and flower at mutually different times. I know little about plants - names, species - any of it. But having heard the title of the bushy purple and white flowering trees to the side of our garden I hung onto the title. I envisioned the two trees as two large wise oracles - tracking the goings on of the garden at all times. They saw what happened yesterday, today and tomorrow and would not forget or forgive any trespassing or mistakes.

The mix of sapphires, iolite and peridot stones represent the beautiful, intricate flowers that bloomed and twinkled in the light on these two wise oracle trees.

Crepe Myrtle - The one that was alone and taken

On the second grassy level of the garden stood another tall crepe myrtle tree. It caused arguments between my parents as my father believed it spoilt the view over Johannesburg from our porch but my mother refused to hack it down. It wasn’t good for climbing as it had a tall and smooth trunk thus as a child I truly was kept up at night thinking how lonely this tree was and was grateful when my pet cat chose to sit under its shade.

The year after we had moved to Australia and came home to visit my father he had removed the tree. It left this sort of unfinished scar in the grass and looked odd as a whole - as though the garden had a missing limb - it just wasn’t as I remembered. At thirteen I felt ridiculous for being upset by it - I knew at this point that the tree didn’t have feelings and hadn’t been lonely but even still I had a quick murmured feeling of being a little consoled that it wouldn’t have to stand alone anymore.

Pearls were traditionally used in mourning jewellery so was used in this piece to both convey the sense of childhood loss I felt at the time and also to represent the off purple colour of the flowers that the tree produced.

Small Connections - Exhibition