MEETING [THE] TEXT HALFWAY

SHOW: All PAST TEXT OBJECT TONGUES TOWERS SWEAT RETRIBUTION QUEER NEXT

HANDS PROJECT
SWEAT SEASON//2021

The Hands Project was a gentle offering developed with members of the Sweat Collective—a Darwin-based group of artists who gather during the wet season—through the washing and documentation of their hands. The gesture recalls a memory of a family friend who once washed the feet of every member of the church I grew up in, and died the following day.

The documentation was digitally collaged into an animation and projected during Sweat Season events. A video still from this work became the cover image for a small publication of collective member stories, reimagined through the writing of Haneen Mahmood Martin.

I place this work here as a reflection on intertextuality: what happens when fragments—gestures, images, and memories—come into contact. At one level, this occurs within the moving collage of the hands themselves; at another level, in the folding of the earlier act of foot washing into my own gesture of washing hands.

Since its making, a cherished member of the collective, Uncle T—whose hands frame the rest—has also passed away. This loss becomes part of the work’s surface, reconfiguring what was already there. Once it read as a diagram of the collective, now it also honours his memory.

I acknowledge The Larrakia People who are the First Peoples and Traditional Custodians of this land and pay my respects to Elders past, present and emerging. Sovereignty of Country was never ceded.