River & Wood

Against the apparent biases of history, memory stirs. Against history’s rationality, the reveries of memory rebel. Against history’s officialism, memory recalls hidden pasts, the lived and the local, the ordinary and the everyday. Against history’s totality, memory’s pluralism blooms.

It was cedar that brought the earliest settlers to this isolated valley back in the 1830s. Apparently, the stands of prized red cedar grew right to the water’s edge and ‘The Big River’ was soon a hive of activity as barges, tugs and steamers transported the timber getters’ bounty to the coast. By all accounts it was a successful venture as the cedar of the Clarence River were quickly logged to extinction. The memory of water is my response to this well-known history.

I am a lower river dweller. Half of my life has been spent on the banks of Lake Wooloweyah. Cloud polishing was a favoured pastime as I traveled by bus to school along the river. My memories of the river are rich with the sight of the waters of the Clarence. Memory has a tendency towards the private and the emotive, the personally biased and the corporeal. Next to history’s judgement, the ghosts of memory rise up. Against history ’s formalities, memory reminisces on veiled accounts, the lived and the local, the commonplace and the mundane. The woods that once grew right to the water’s edge are simply evocative illusions that enrich the aura of place that memory resists.

The works made are a personal recall of the river set against culture ’s official explanations of the past and the fate of the red cedar floating hazily in and above the big river.