Interrupted Life Journeys is a collaborative piece developed by Phillip Doggett-Williams and lead by Shelley Hannigan. It incorporates Phillip’s painting of the sea in response to migration and Australia’s detention of asylum seekers. The COVID pandemic resulted in restrictions to state, national and international borders, highlighting how the sea can be a uniting symbol but also divides. During 2020 and 2021, Journey’s ‘across seas’ (international travel) were heavily restricted - in some places forbidden. Shelley created the copper wire boat that hangs suspended during one of the Covid lockdowns. As a migrant to Australia, she had expected to freely visit her birthplace and family in other countries but this boat emerged from her art practice, to represent the universal feeling of being in limbo. The black boat that sits moored below, represents her last time overseas before the Pandemic when she gathered Australian bush-fire stained driftwood, from the shores of New-Zealand. This boat sits upon her shibori-created cotton ‘waves’ with a cargo of driftwood that she had to get passed through Australian customs. This is set in charcoal clay. French knitted “rope” semi-connects this boat to the sea symbolising an insecure mooring - representing our predicament in 2021.
Publication classification
JO4 Original Creative Works – Other
Scale
NTRO Other
Extent
4 colour photographs
Recognition, awards & prizes
International Juried Selection process preceeded entry into this exhibition.
Event
Re-imagined" A Collaboration with a Difference: Make the Ordinary Extraordinary