Short Stories

I stood, staring down at an image of Duane Hanson's sculpture Woman with a Laundry Basket (1974) and was brought back to a memory of a school trip to the Art Gallery of South Australia during the nineties. At the time, I was just a girl, probably around ten. I remember the artwork's realism being quite impressive, but she unsettled me. She wears glasses, has curlers in her hair, a laundry basket on her hip, and is pregnant. Her face, cast downward, had the look of defeat. She was  terribly alone. She gave me a sick feeling in my stomach. I was too young to articulate why I felt this way. It wasn’t until last week during sculpture class, when I saw her again in a book, that I heard myself say out loud in conversation with my art lecturer and peers: I think she’s the reason why I didn’t have kids . The woman represented a life I didn't want for myself, a life of domesticity and mundane routines. A path that girls like me from migrant working-class families went d...

Stories are all we are , they’re all we have . I had just turned 20. He was 35. His words eluded my emotional comprehension back then but resonate with me now. These memories percolated while I watched Charles Foster’s online presentation at the G10 . I was reminded of unpacking ideas in a chaotic world , specifically, Donna Haraway’s book Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (2016) when Foster said in his talk: “ It takes a story to know a stor y”. Haraway explores our interconnectedness with the environment and other species, advocating for new forms of kinship and collaboration in the face of ecological crises. She asserts: “ It matters what stories make worlds; what worlds make storie s”. Stories are tools we use to create and share our realities, environment, and how we interact. Stories are necessary for navigating our place in the world. By sharing narratives about our connections with other human and non-human beings, Haraway highlights how these sto...

Edward Gibbon Wakefield. I pass his commemorative bronze bust almost every day - a metal cast of Dark Heritage. This term stems from  dark tourism studies associated with specific sites of  death ,  tragedy , and  disaster . More recently, the concept of Dark Heritage has expanded to include broader aspects of cultural heritage sites and artefacts associated with complex, contested, and  negative histories . So it is here where I suggest that we take the opportunity to contest the problematic plaque of Edward Gibbon Wakefield on Parliament House on North Terrace. Let me tell you why. The plaque reads: IN HONOUR OF EDWARD GIBBON WAKEFIELD  1796 - 1862 THE AUTHOR OF THE SYSTEM OF  LAND - SALES COLONIZATION UPON WHICH  THE PROVINCE OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA  WAS FOUNDED FOR FREE SETTLERS  WITH FREEHOLD LANDS AND RESULTANT  SELF-GOVERNMENT.  1952 The plaque highlights the idea that free settlers (South Australia was established as a co...