This Mountain Space

2018 – present

A dynamic, expanding painting

4000sqm emanating

Mittagong, Gundungurra Country

This mountain space, this space of return, in a world of no return. In a world that’s gone before we see it. Here we save the world, on this landscaped mountain slope. Too late. Is it? For some. Do the sums, the damage is done. We save our world. In this world we save the endangered by saving danger, by loving what is dangerous. Danger falls, danger bites, danger stings, danger burns. Danger is endangered. Formlessness. Entropy. Legs. No legs. Holes. Mounds. Rotting and stinking. It’s urban but it rises above the towns, that sit in the valleys. We can’t see them but we can hear them. The cars mainly. Motorbikes. Trains. Machines. We hear the machines. Hear them roar! Hear the money roar. We are not far from what is not being saved, from concrete laid. From lopped and topped and felled and dozed. We go to concrete laid. Guilty. We are surrounded by what is not being saved. We go to what is not saved. And it is being saved less. We are so close. We are surrounded by replacements. Re-place-ments. Creating new places. New places in old places, mimicking somewhere else. Saving ‘old worlds’ in ‘new worlds’. Old lawns. Old hedges. New fences. Old looking New walls. Making a world in the worlds of others. Guilty. Sorry. This place I call mine was once yours. I bought it. My culture took it. I bought what was taken. We speculate on what was stolen. Complicit. Benefiting from the acts of tyrants and murderers. Clearance. Not an innocuous word. Clearance in the trees. Maybe. Clearance of trees. Land clearances. High-land clearances. Meanwhile. Meanwhile the earth turns on it’s axis. The earth orbits the sun. It carries the catastrophe we call human nature. Around and around we go. Back to Nature. Snake slithering nature. Wombat burrowing nature. Myrmecia fanatical nature. Funnelweb funnelling rearing nature. Kangaroo hopping nature. Kookaburra laughing at you nature. Fangs of nature. Sharp beaks. Soft larvae in hard architecture. Descending claws. Suspended spiders. Mosquitos! Whining! Hoots. Yaps. Growls. Woman attacked. That’s what they say. That’s the foxes. Involuntary interlopers. Or the Nightjar? Screams. And the men. The men on the summit. The white van. The man in the white van. The old man in the white van. The old white man in the old white van. The Night Watch. The Day Watch. The Watch Tower. Witnesses. They reside here. Elevated. Closer to God. The Good, The Bad, The Godly. Knock Knock. No one’s here. Nightfall. Lights. Now we see the Pro-Life lights. Grow trees, grow trees (I believe in your life). Block their blind light. Bring back the night.