'Every life experiences the results of the accumulated actions and interactions of every other life before it.'

The 3 works shown here, Union, Kanomi and Cabbagenut palm all explore the interrelationship of events/ our collective acts. In particular they explore the lost relationship with the original people who lived on North Kepple Island, the Kanomi. Significantly there is knowledge of only two people remaining from this Aboriginal group within the larger Woppaburra Tribe of the Kepple Islands and surrounding country.

Currently North Kepple Island is an education centre; the only education centre that is an island on Australia's east coast. From my perspective this goes some small way towards healing the rift with the massacred Kanomi, whose bones are rumoured to lie beneath the significant middens that are evident on particular beaches there.

The first work Cabbagenut Palms was created at the education centre on North Kepple Island. The idea to work with Coconut palms and the fronds of the Cabbage Tree/ 'Livistona Australis' arose when it was explained that the old coconut palms were to be destroyed as an introduced plant species. The island is also home to significant crops of ancient Cabbage Tree palms/ Livistona, which are protected. The eradication of the old Coconut palms lead to questions about the shifting ground of what is considered 'precious'. For me it represented a kind of irony. When once our ancestors introduced cattle and eradicated the original people and their way of life, the island now preserves the original eco-systems that make up its rich natural environment. To do so there is an eradication program for introduced plants and animals (such as Coconut palms and possums).
From this evidential material I created a hybrid tree plantation, which is a cross between the Cabbage tree and Coconut Palm by carefully oiling and placing Cabbage tree fronds as a buttress for the targeted Coconut trees. Titled 'Cabbagenut Palms' I saw the overall work as a kind of protection for the trees and as a way of articulating the ironies of the islands history and highlighting shifting ideas about what is considered 'precious'.