Last Flight uses a
combination of text and image to explore the plight of the dispossessed, in
particular refugees from Middle-Eastern conflict zones. As a migrant I have
immigrated to Australia twice, once as a child ten-pound-Pom, and later as an
independent adult through a migrant application. Any complications in my
identity due to dual nationality pale into insignificance in relation to the
distress of those forced to leave their homes and flee.
The primary sources for the solvent release images are news
feeds and the internet, which is how we as Australians become informed about this
conflict. It should be noted, in a blurring of boundaries, that some of the
images are from war games and aerial survey maps of Australian suburbs.
The explanatory text on the meaning of the word conflict has
been put through an optical character recognition software and translated
between pdf and word files. The process has garbled the meaning and changed the
image to text, addressing central and ongoing themes in my work of the
stability of identity and meaning, between text and image. The images have been
over-printed with offset intaglio printed etching.
The text of Last
Flight, in handwritten pencil, was
written as part of my ‘Conflict in History’ Residency for the Australian
Historical Association and the University of Queensland’s School of History,
Philosophy, Religion and Classic and the UQ Art Museum in the second half of
2014. It was published in Thing &
Unthing, Angela Gardner, Vagabond Press, Sydney 2014.
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