Early 2019, I visited an excavation site (part of the Metro Tunnel construction) located in Swanston St, near Elizabeth St, in Melbourne city. Experiencing the landscape of the site, and later examining my photographs, I was reminded of my childhood when my father imported silk. He regularly travelled to India, China and Japan to source textiles and develop his business.

Each culture produced particular types of silks, which he sold to fashion and interior designers in Australia. I remember unfolding large paper maps and plotting his trips, looking at the different landscapes of these countries and the distances between them. He would make notes about the cities and companies he was planning to visit and the types of silks he would try to find. There were always vaccines and visas to apply for, and countless small swatches of silks to organise.

wonderland is an abstract memory map, relating the site visit and the recalled memory. It connects the nature of silk, including 50 year old fragments of silk fabric from my father estate, with the memories I have of my fathers travels and the structure of the topography of landscape revealed in a freshly excavated site with the production of a hand-woven textile.

wonderland, 2019

hand woven mulberry silk, silk fabric, cotton 

29 x 28 cm