Magpies and Pomegranates

It was high summer. The grass had turned brown and the hydrangeas were doing their thing, becoming papery and turning those intense colours that come with drought and heat. Even the nurtured Love-Lies-Bleeding had bled all its colour until it resembled the field dock.

It was so windy and dry that I thought I could have been anywhere in the world, wading through the dried grasses around the town of ..., climbing the hills of Otago, or kicking up the dust under the gum trees along the trails of Byron Bay.

I love how our minds make those connections, triggered by a glimpse of something familiar and then linking our memories together into a necklace of beautiful recollection.

My morning walks had me encountering magpies who were infinitely curious, as was I, discovering that such a familiar bird could be found all over the world. Yet the magpies of Australia and New Zealand are not the small feathered thieves of Britain and Europe. They are actually butcherbirds, labelled magpies by early settlers for the familiarity they offered with their home countries.

With backgrounds photographed in Trastevere, Rome, floral compositions arranged in a paddock in New Zealand, and magpies (aka butcherbirds) photographed in Queensland, Australia, the Magpies and Pomegranates from the Two for Joy series is a web of familiarity, tradition and memory.

Each artwork begins with elements I have photographed and gathered over time — flowers, objects, architecture and details of the natural world. Photographed separately and brought together through composition, they allow me to explore the relationships that interest me: between nature and the built world, history and the present, different cultures and traditions, and the things we carry with us from one place to another.