Tea Ceremony

I had a residency in Beijing and began photographing and drawing hands, it was also a good way to meet people. A friend had written out in Mandarin what I was asking and people were very obliging.

But I became fascinated by the tea ceremonies that I was given, the attention paid to different teas, and the way of preparing and drinking them.I began making large tea prints using different tea leaf and food stuffs of my journeys, pomegranate, orange, persimmon allowing them to sit and make their singular marks as they dried.

 

This work was part of a curated exhibition 'Sequences and Cycles"of 5 ceramic artists from Central Australia. I used locally gathered materials to build with, termite mound, local clay, grasses, manure and recycled paper which I slaked in an old bath in the garden. Many friendly folk, some I knew some I didn't, offered to help mix these bath loads up, even the quite smelly manure ones, proving that playing with mud is a pretty innate thing. I left the forms as adobe structures to facilitate an easy recycling at some point. Recycled materials clay paper grasses cow manure bush fire termite mound mixtures,

Earth

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2012

Pigeon tower under construction

Early morning additions  before workto the earth form. I had hoped to complete the whole sphere and roll it in the gallery but not to be, and it was still partly wet as it was installed

A willing worker extracting clay from the top layers of a local clay pan.

Projection off side of wall
 In 2003 I was diagnosed with breast cancer.I could see myself looking intently at my body in the mirror so I started taking pictures of that looking. 

The work consists of digitally generated colour prints sourced from 35mm negative film. 

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