Journal
Articles
Biyala Stories
ONE DAY LAST August I was standing on the banks of Moonee Ponds Creek, near Racecourse Road in Flemington,...
Out of nature
My deep connection with Australia lies in the natural environment. All the emotions are about home. I was born with an irrepressible need to return to my Europe roots; each pilgrimage back to Australia is followed by a deep sense of uprooting when I leave.
The corralling
During Covid we've become intensified versions of ourselves. With our horizons foreshortened, we are forced to focus on ourselves and our interests. What activities do I like? What is it that I value? This, too, can become a relentless cycle of its own.
On the margins of the good swamp
I AM IN the archives looking at a sketch of a creek drawn a hundred years ago. Firmly attached...
Human rights
Within Australia – compared with many European nations – human rights are still not part of the lingua franca or aspirational framework of political and social discourse. Human rights are not widely seen to merit reflection, historical or otherwise. They do not feature as an organising principle of civic or history education on high school curricula, for example.
Equinox
Christian Thompson’s digital photographic prints could be stills from a morality play in which he performs the sole protagonist....
In the garden of ideas
Emily Floyd, Owl of Minerva (2019) Owl: cast aluminium, two-part epoxy paint; lantern: cast and fabricated aluminium, lighting insert 150 x...
This south and that north
Click here to listen to Ashley Hay reading her introduction ‘This south and that north’. THERE IS A particular ebb and flow in...
Ripped in half?
ON THE HIGHWAY before the turnoff to the tranquil village where my small house sits in the heart of...
Class, identity, justice
THE IMAGE IS strong and striking. It is of a young woman; her face unsmiling, her gaze proud and...
The tyranny of closeness
I REMEMBER ENTERING Krakow for the first time, in 1995. I’d arrived at the train station via Paris, Berlin,...
The art of the salon
WE TYPICALLY THINK of the grandest, most impressive parts of European culture in terms of physicality: castles, palaces, libraries,...
