I have made a sideboard with grand story: a ‘deep time’ story of place and place making, of violence, ignorance, myopia, of great and abiding love of everything and nothing at all. 

A jet-black sideboard you may read as stone or steel or stained. But look closely. Touch it. It is wood. You can see the grain and feel the warmth of Ancient Red Gum.

Ancient Red Gum is Red Gum buried over 10,000 years ago, when the Snowy Mountains shed their ice and snow and flooded the Basin.

During the flood, the tree is knocked over and buried. Over thousands of years, It turns from blood-red to almost completely black.

The silver binding comes from a cross-cultural collaborative project, ‘Bala Ga Lilli’ (Two Ways Learning), with Yolngu man Bonhula Yunupingu. It is about working together and learning from each other. Bonhula uses salvaged copper wire as binding when making the spear (Garra) and the thrower (Gulpul). Bonhula and I have used this binding technique in sculpture and furniture.

In this work Jeweler Katherine Bowman has cast the binding in silver.

The silver is the moonlight. There is no darkness without light and no light without darkness. You can not touch without being touched.