Forgotten Australians

  • You Can’t Choose Your Family

    You Can’t Choose Your Family

    These are the very words that set me on the well-travelled family history trail. Ducking and diving through swathes of digitised records, crawling in and out of rabbit holes lined with red herrings and eventually uncovering a number of families that you probably wouldn’t choose for yourself.

  • Validation is good for you

    Validation is good for you

    Every now and then someone comes along, someone neutral, and they find something, a quality within your work. This isn’t your family or best friend, this is someone who’s first connection to you is through your art.

  • Mentally Difficult

    Mentally Difficult

    She was reported to be ‘deficient’ and ‘mentally difficult’; a description that could apply to me at various times of my own life. But when did this apparent state of mind develop? Did it already exist or was it a control mechanism? Was it because they wouldn’t return her children?

  • Abandoned original artwork

    Abandoned original artwork

    Making many copies of my own artwork provided freedom—I found myself taking risks because I wasn’t worried about losing the original drawing.

  • Forgotten Australians – a story

    Forgotten Australians – a story

    ‘You can’t choose your family,’ the 89-year-old man said to his five-year-old great grandson.

  • Forgotten Australians

    Forgotten Australians

    ‘Abandoned’ – by Kendrea Rhodes  a snippet from a story about a boy lost in institutional care in the 1920s We left him to rest, or so we thought. In the hospital lobby I realized my son was missing, so we retraced our steps back to my grandfather’s room. The picture was memorable: an 89…

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