location dots

As we approached Australia’s summer of 2019, the winds got hotter, the earth drier, and the grasses bleached white. We heard of the first fires and watched the smoke spreading across the sky, shutting us inside. Over Christmas we first started hearing of a new virus starting to spread like our own bush fires, and by February 2020 it had started to lap against our shoreline. In February my university closed due to damage from a violent hailstorm; it reopened for three weeks, then closed again as the COVID-19 pandemic reached our cities. As these waves of change reduced my movements, I began to make more DIY location dots, this time based on memories of places I had been since 2017, including here in Canberra. The colours referenced memories and feelings of the time while the spiralling pattern of the line resembled the circular patterns in churches, used in walking meditations by people who could not go on pilgrimage. The golds and greys of summer’s grasses and the fresh greens of winter’s new stalks, wattle’s yellows and dawn’s pinks, crisp blue sky at midday, deep shadows near sunset, powder white frosts, deep pink gum flowers, and every day  I am here, I am here, I am here, location dot for Canberra winter 2020.

Photos Dierdre Pearce