Walking with clay
Friday 30 January 2026
Delatite River, Merrijig, Victoria

I have been holding handfuls of clay in very hot weather. Walking from shade shadow to shade shadow. Along a river bank. Pinching with my left hand, then my right, as I step left, right, left, right. A generative bilateral rhythm: one pinch of clay for every step taken. When the heat is too much, and the clay needs to rest, I slip into the river. The skin of the current slides silkily along my skin. My body and the body of water become one. I look and listen closely to ripples, burbles, and chattering across the river's surface. Beneath it, mineral solids. River-tumbled stones. These handfuls of clay have been compressed into objects holding time spent with: the flow of a cool mountain river a heatwave the aftermath of bushfires a vast bay where I rolled with seals smooth, responsive terracotta clay The Secret of Roan Inish and meeting John Sayles remembering Joy Hester's inked eyes, sensuous mouths, and her proximity to a river the women artists in Jennifer Higgie's The Other Side thinking about the embodied making of the Woman of Willendorf. My body. Clay body. The body of water. Becoming form.

Blackware firing
Friday 1 May 2026
Rooftop, Naarm/North Melbourne

Wind swirls across the rooftop. All around me. And around the cauldron I am about to stoke. Perhaps today is too windy. Brown, brittle Plane Tree leaves become the first fire. A seasonal layer. An offering to Waring, the Kulin season of wombats. Beneath the leaves, fine sawdust, curled wood shavings are two terracotta vessels, nestled as though asleep. Greenware bedded down. Waiting. I strike the match. The spell is cast. Time. Air. Fire. Material. The sawdust begins to smoulder. Slowly. Patiently. The vessels warm. I wait. Heat gathers. Oxygen slips away. The fire begins to breathe differently. Smoke thick with carbon finds the clay body, settling, entering, leaving itself behind. Smoke escapes the rim of the cauldron. Grey tendrils. Ghosts breathe through smoky alchemy. I become both witch and witness. Waiting for slaty grey, inky black, mercury silver to appear across the clay surface. Hour after hour the fuel becomes ash. The vessels sink, deeper into the cauldron. Into darkness. Into cooling. Twelve hours pass. The lid is lifted. The trace of slow burn remains.