djurra bim

Back in the cold Canberra studio my head is still full of what can only be described as the ‘Gunbalanya sensation.’ My thinner tropical body and expansive thoughts are ill-equipped for icy winds and stale indoor air. In this counter-physical cerebral space I surround myself with cherished djurra and dolobbo bim and lay out delek, garlba and gunnojbe, materials with people and places attached. Memories of freedom and warmth contract into a protective bubble around me. I continue the paintings I had started there, beginning with small ochres on cardboard begun in a painting workshop with Balang (Gersheim) and Nabulanj (Graham). I had purchased their works so I could finish my small copies. Parallel material and stylistic processes produce sensations of a specific nature distinguishable from subjective response or even experiential knowledge (although these are valuable tools in evaluating art as a product of the maker). In Gilles Deleuze: Image and Text, Elizabeth Grosz elaborates on sensation in the Deleuzian sense of the word as, “mobilizing forces…[that] lie mid-way between subjects and objects, the point at which the one converts into the other.” Art, as the producer of sensation is the inducer of becomings and I realise the extent of familial agency now activated by the other.