For ‘the stories we water’, participants were invited to join a gathering to celebrate, remember, and connect with the diverse stories of three plants, and three women (Caitlin Franzmann, Dominique Chen and Libby Harward). We each contributed a personally significant plant into an unfolding recipe of tales. To realise the recipe, participants were invited to join into processes of cracking macadamia nuts, making nasturtium sandwiches, kneading connections through memories of bunjwal, tasting, listening and unforgetting.
Plants carry stories of places and people. Some of these stories are embedded with deep cultural knowledge, some offer moments for truth-telling and others prompt us to consider what it means to live sustainably. They are life, in all its delight and mayhem. And when all is mixed together, we can ask, which stories will we water?
This event was held in the Metro Arts Studios on Saturday 24 June 2023, 2pm-3:30pm. It was supported by the University of Sunshine Coast Mistra Environmental Communication artist-in-residence program and MAVA Pathfinders Program.
Collaborators
Dominique Chen is a Gamilaroi woman, and transdisciplinary artist and researcher, living on Yinibara Country in South East Queensland. She lectures within the Bachelor of Contemporary Australian Indigenous Art, Griffith University, and is undertaking PhD research at the University of Technology Sydney, in the area of relational creative practice and urban-based Aboriginal food and medicine growing.
Libby Harward is a descendant of the Ngugi people of Mulgumpin (Moreton Island) in the Quandamooka, who creates artworks that break through the colonial overlay to connect with the cultural landscape, which always was, and remains to be there. Her political practice, in a range of genres, continues this decolonising process.
"Imagine me - I’m absent and present, sharing bread memories. Bunjwal, you are our language. You are a large feather-like fern, a holder of protein and starch for bread. Family to the sandy salty swamp country. Tall and proud….your leaves, your roots, remember us in your fishlike form."