​2017 - 2019
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​Eurasia - Antipodes scroll

           Making Eurasia Antipodes scroll, Richmond, Queensland. 2017                                         Rizika. Detail. Eurasia Antipodes scroll. Watercolour, oil, found material, paper, silk. 1000cmx20cm (entire).

​Eurasia Antipodes scroll begins in 2017 on the last day of summer in Vienna. I had come to share the Australindopak Archive at Hinterland cross cultural arts platform, managed by curator Gudrun Wallenbock. In Vienna I spent time with people whose stories came into the scrolls. I stayed with Gudrun, and then Iranian performance painter Mahdieh Bayat and composer Johannes Kretz. I met Mahdieh's family and her sister's startling baby, Roya. I visited the sinking city of Venice where tourists like myself pulled the city apart at the seams. The Venice Biennale was happening. Anybody with a bit of real estate had rented it to an artist or to a nation. Exhibitors paid thousands of euros per week for spaces whilst in the streets many people were homeless and begging.

Back in Vienna winter began suddenly. The seasons are punctual, and punctuality is innate to being Viennese. If you arrange to meet someone in a week, they will be there and not a minute late. I pressed my face against the windows of bakeries but I was too poor to buy the pastries or the cheese, or sit in cafes having coffees. My flights had been funded by an Australian arts grant and Hinterland gave a small stipend, but the difference in economies was quite scary. I sat on the cobbles for free and drew the roofs of buildings ornamented with gold leaves. A girl on a blanket nearby begged theatrically, her arms outstretched, her face arranged in mournful entreaty, demonstrating how hard you have to work to get a coin here.
 
Cultural whiplash became a recurrent theme in the Eurasia scroll. Soon after coming back to Australia and Hunchy in Queensland an opportunity came to travel to Pakistan. Returning to Australia, I ended up in the city of Townsville for six months. On the banks of Ross River I met turtles, and swans, and the great White obsession with lawn mowing. In Townsville the coconut trees have been cut down due to fear of falling nuts. Local people think that speaking fast is a sign of intelligence. I made excursions to communities in Western Queensland, Canberra, and Brisbane before returning to Townsville, where Eurasia scroll was completed with a story shared by a family of refugees from the Congo.

                   Click on an image above to tour Eurasia Antipodes scroll.