TRIBUTARIES

I walk, sense, trace the changes.
I once followed a river and with each crossing of one of its tributaries, the landscape grew as a character teaching me about my internal landscape,
and how to navigate human relationships.

It changed me

We are waterways. Our veins swallow the breathing wetlands.

Walking inspires me to design, create, cast, forge, frame, and adorn. Lines between wet and dry, land and ocean, written and spoken are blurred, and I need more than one language to say this.

Our view from the edges of the Indian Ocean is distorted. Dit is gestolen land, dat toehoort aan de Wadjuk mensen van de Noongar natie. I bring my own imprint: descendent of colonising Belgian ancestors, daughter of a Flemish activist, granddaughter of a lace maker, of a cattle farmer. I grew up living with animals. My family accepted death and adored the vibrancy of life and through animals we were connected to the environment. In Flanders these were rabbits, cats, dogs, ducks, sheep cows. I had a donkey

I am enamoured with Western Australia: the wetlands in Fitzgerald River National Park, Wilson Inlet near Denmark, Beeliar wetlands near Fremantle where I live, the restored bushland in Badgingarra, the former fringe reef Devonian Valley in the Kimberley, endlessly endless Eighty Mile Beach

My practice is focused on the preciousness of our living planet and our role in preserving it, drawing a connecting line from the mineral substances of the earth, through to tributary forms of the living planet, and on to the aesthetic perceptions of humans. I trace the threads of what connects us and expose where our co-existence makes this living, breathing planet

fragile.