“I dreamt of the loveliest creature Mum, she had white spots all down her back”

“The Quoll” is an art & multimedia project involving exhibitions, film, an LP album and audiovisual music performances with music by Bing/Santospirito (St David’s cathedral, Hobart, as part of MOFO 2021), and an LP album (early 2022). The artwork features fantasy/mythical creatures wandering the highlands of Tasmania in a post-human, post-marsupial future where lichens and fires reign. The project explores our place in the earth’s history by taking humans out of the focus and considering whether we’ll even be remembered by the landscape.

The art in this project was created across two art residencies: at the Q Bank gallery in Queenstown, Tasmania in July 2020, and at Cradle Mountain National Park in May 2021 (through Arts Tasmania).

2020 - Catalogue of watercolour works from Q Bank Gallery (2020) can be viewed here. Some of the ink-works will be up on the Penny Contemporary website in due course (issues with their site to be rectified in 2023). A third exhibition of works was shown at the Wilderness Gallery July-October 2022.

Bing/Santospirito’s album The Quoll, with cover art from the series can be bought at Bing/Santospirito’s bandcamp site, also listen through any streaming app.

Late in 2020 I was approached by Rebecca Thompson about using some adapted versions of my Quoll artworks to create a short film. Bec is a film-maker based in Hobart who was working on a project called There Is No "I" In Island, which became a multi-award winning series of short animations based on the art of five different Tasmanian artists. Island is produced by Cat Rummin of Rummin Productions. The voices in the animations were taken from regular Tasmanians about their experience of lockdown in 2020 describing their experiences, their hopes, their dreams, their reality, their imaginations. It's a stunning production.

All five short films are now out on youtube / facebook, with the fifth one being based on my Quoll series of paintings, animated by Amara Gantz with colouring by Paula Hatton and supported by a larger team with Vivien Mason, directed by Bec Thompson.

Be sure to watch all five episodes as they all have a wonderful mix of emotional, absurd, and human experience. So joyful.

You can watch episode 5 - right here!