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.
djurra bim
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