On Leaving
Prints hand transferred onto Aluminium Plate / 2013
Alexanderdorf, Germany
Coober Pedy, Australia
Tromso, Norway
Berlin, Germany
Sperenberg, Germany
Hamburg, Germany
Oranienburg, Germany
Enping, China
Donji Vijacani, Pnjavor, Bosnia
Berlin, Germany
Prints hand transferred onto Aluminium Plate
What is it to leave a country? A relationship? A friendship? A job? A way of life?
"I traversed these places on different journeys, with a camera in hand and an inquisitive mind. I captured them as a form of remembrance; they were places I knew were impermanent. In the time span between images I experienced highs and feelings of freedom in it's purest forms. I fell into lows that left me more unrecognisable to myself than I care to admit.
After living abroad for a stint over two years ago, I had to come home to Australia. My stream of consciousness became consumed by thoughts of my impending date to fly home. I started to process what it is to leave a way of life. What are the consequences? The part of me that didn't want to return home was a mixture of fear and sentiment. I had to face the consequences of my original leaving, I was returning to a life that no longer resembled what I had left. I was no longer the same.
In trying to process the act of leaving I penned words to paper, Goodbye, End State, Beginning State, Letting go, Cutting Ties, Impermanence, Transient, Ephemeral, Nomad, the list went on.
Upon returning home, after much time had passed, I found myself trawling through images of my past travels over the years. With them came memories, some of which returned with great lucidity, others distant and filled with gaps. It was an act of rediscovery.
The slow and tactile process of transferring the prints by hand onto aluminium plate became a process of making these places tangible and real again. I liked the imperfections in the new images, they brought with them melancholic undertones that came to represent what I had lost in the act of leaving."