One Single Wish follows on from my recent work on death and grieving. It’s a site-specific installation composed of hundreds of handcrafted pom poms. These pom poms were crafted in response to my partner’s illness and death. The bright colours and silliness of these quickly wound creations stood in stark contrast to the measured clinical world that surrounded us. After my partner died, communal crafting became a way for me to connect with other people’s experience of grief. I became interested in the ways loss can be externalised and how this act can be used to disrupt the silence that shrouds taboo topics like death and dying. At the centre of my art practice is an intense curiosity in how making can be used to process traumatic events, particularly in those instances when we don’t have the words to wrap around the experience.

Meeting 'The Cupcakes' at the opening of Artlands was an absolute hightlight of the festival. You can check out more of their household tips for a happier world here www.roundabout.net.au  

Future/Public is an exhibition of propositional public artworks in parklands central to the various venues for in the ARTLANDS precinct.  Instead of producing finished and lasting artworks for public spaces, Future/Public will use public space as a platform for questioning the role of art in public.  The exhibition will consist of 10 installations that ‘propose’ potentials for artworks that stands outside of our received expectation and understanding of public art.  In this way, it will challenge the genre’s traditional and suggest new roles, ideas, and modes for art that inhabits the shared space of the public sphere.

Artists: Mark Booth (Hill End), Sarah McEwan (Birrego), Julie Montgarrett (Wagga), April Phillips (Coffs Harbour), Amelia Reid (Murwillumbah) Genevieve Carroll (Hill End), Karen Golland (Bathurst), Dani Marti (Cessnock) Christine McMillan (Kandos) and Rochelle Summerfield (Grafton).