‘Here I am again home’ is an exploration of the artist’s physical and metaphysical orientation and reconnection to her hometown of Newcastle/Muloobinba, after many decades of living elsewhere.
Maps illuminate pathways to and from the past. In the rift of a valley, curve of a coast or thrust of a headland, they prompt memories and the liminal journeys that connected them. Maps can also signal the future in the burgeoning of towns and cities and forecast forward movement in the thickening trace of a mountain range or the powerful currents of a river.
In this work the seed pod also acts as a metaphor for origins and potential for change. As in nature and journeying on wind or water, like a seed, she has had to possess the duality of resilience and vulnerability, alternately grounding and growing again, to begin a new life cycle.
The title ‘Here I am again home’ is from the poem ‘This Is a Win’ by Pip Sheehan and published in the anthology ‘Home is the Hunter’, Catchfire Press, 2016.