AFRESH, at Gallery 9, Sydney (2015) was a series of text pieces on canvas, plywood and other materials. The words and images in these pieces channeled the spirit of Australian fruit and vegetable cartons, of which I am a dedicated collector. Through the processes of collecting, archiving and mapping I explore the vernacular and symbolic peculiarities of fruit cartons and the places where they originate.
In making works for this exhibition, I imagined an immigrant farmer going out into the broad Australian landscape to start afresh, and being tortured by inaction in the face of seemingly innumerable possibilities. This absurdist scenario is gestured at through puns and ambiguous fruit carton-like compositions of image and text that are simultaneously hopeful and melancholic.