Maiden, mother, monster

I too, overflow

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  • Published 20250805
  • ISBN: 978-1-923213-10-4
  • Extent: 236pp
  • Paperback, eBook, PDF

I FIRST SAW her when I was twenty-one.

She was wearing a knitted purple cardigan over a cream collared shirt buttoned to her long throat. Her dark hair was parted down the middle. I studied the angles of the painting, the flattening. How it defied order. I felt the nearness of her, with her careful hands holding her knitting, her attention focused on her work. The Sock Knitter (1915)by Grace Cossington Smith.

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Buy, recycle, repeat

The tip shop creates a vacuum of sentimentality. This only adds to the thrill of the hunt, where the search becomes bigger than the thing itself. In that moment, time alters. The past and present merge and we step outside, just for a second, the familiar cycles of desire and need that shape our daily lives. For a moment, something can be treasured, even if the object of our fantasy exists only in our minds. We look for it in the piles of things people leave behind, searching through the rubbish; all we’re really looking for is ourselves. Reflected back to us are the rain-washed artefacts of our consumption that are lined up and sorted on pallets and old tables. The metallic shells of old fireplace flues, stacks of doors and aluminium windows, fishing nets and old tyres that fill the outside lot.

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