‘…Distant places give us refuge in territories where our own histories aren’t so deeply entrenched and we can imagine other stories, other selves…’
R.Solnit
A Country Big Enough to Disappear in is a long-term body of work engaging with an Australia beyond the metropolitan. The work claims no agenda and seeks no resolve in that sense. Rather it is something that accompanies me as I keep learning to love this country, hoping to be loved back. It’s really a narrative of journey and memory-making, one that allows me to study a place and to look and to listen.
I sometimes get told “you have a very German eye”. What does that mean? I’ve never got an answer. The thing I know is that, just as anyone who comes from a story of movement through language and culture and continent, my eye is in-between (language and culture and continent). Rather than feeling an unauthorised storyteller, I consider this a space of privilege – close, but ever so slightly removed.
Perhaps this is why I am interested in stories of community and aspects of place in a state of transition.