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Jas Shalimar, Mum’s Nose / Mine, 2023 Brass, Dimensions vary, Courtesy of the artist The Words You Whispered is a curated exhibition presented as part of my Bachelor of Fine Art (Honours) in Curating at Monash University in 2026. Bringing together works by Donna Bailey, Parker Lev Dupain, Frank Hinder and Jas Shalimar, alongside poetry by Eden Blake and text by Georgia Vanselow, the exhibition considers intimacy through touch, memory, inheritance, care and the body. Taking its title from Blake’s poem Carole Grace, the exhibition begins from a question of what remains when physical proximity ends. Rather than approaching intimacy solely through interpersonal relationships, The Words You Whispered considers how intimacy can persist through objects, materials, gestures, resemblance and memory. The exhibition became an opportunity to explore how curating might create relationships between works without requiring them to communicate a single, fixed meaning. The maternal operates as one of the exhibition’s central registers, but is deliberately expanded beyond biological motherhood. Care, attachment, nurture, genealogy and transmission become ways of thinking about relationships between bodies, generations and materials. Donna Bailey’s ambiguous, fragmented figures and Parker Lev Dupain’s intimate confrontation with the maternal body sit alongside Frank Hinder’s historical representation of motherhood and Jas Shalimar’s bodily and genealogical forms. Their differences are important: the exhibition does not attempt to resolve these works into one definition of intimacy, but allows tensions and gaps between them to remain visible. Donna Bailey, Mulberry Lips, 2003 Type C photograph, 105.5 x 129.5cm, Monash University Collection, Purchased 2006, Accession No. 2006.26 Two of the works in the exhibition, by Donna Bailey and Frank Hinder, were generously loaned from the Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA) Collection. I am particularly grateful to Emma Neale and the MUMA Collection team for their support in making these works available, coordinating their installation and deinstallation, and for giving me the opportunity to spend time in the Collection Store. Working with the Collection became an important part of my development as a curator, allowing me to consider how historical and contemporary works can be placed into new relationships through exhibition-making. Frank Hinder, Mother and Child, 1947 Lithograph on paper, Plate: 42.0 x 76.0 cm, Monash University Collection, Donated by Dr. David Rosenthal 1998, Accession No. 1998.60 This was particularly important to my Honours research, which asks: what remains of intimacy when physical proximity ends? Through the exhibition, I became increasingly interested in intimacy not simply as something represented, but as something produced through proximity — between artworks, materials, viewers and the exhibition space itself. Parker Lev Dupain, Untitled Square, 2023 Digital print, wooden bed slats, 795 x795, Courtesy of the artist The Words You Whispered was ultimately a first iteration of an ongoing curatorial investigation. It allowed me to test how an exhibition can hold together fragmented experiences of the body, memory, gender, motherhood and inheritance while leaving room for ambiguity. Moving forward, I will continue developing these ideas through my Honours research and subsequent iterations of the project, particularly considering how the relationships between works, space and viewer might be strengthened, complicated and opened further for the graduate exhibition. Rather than offering a conclusion, The Words You Whispered proposes intimacy as something continually negotiated between presence and absence, holding and letting go, and the tangible and intangible. View the installation photographs

Esperanto Magazine, The Sex Edition, Issue 3, 2026 (print) For the third 2026 edition of Esperanto Magazine, The Sex Edition, I wrote Barbie Doll Bare: A Piece on Genital Beauty Standards. The article explores the increasingly narrow expectations placed on vulvas and bodies in an age where pornography is often encountered long before real sexual experience. The piece began with a question that I found both confronting and strangely simple: what happens when pornography becomes our anatomy lesson? With constant access to highly curated and often unrealistic images of sex and bodies, it can become difficult to distinguish between what is representative of human anatomy and what has been selected, staged, altered or performed for a camera. Hairlessness, symmetry and smooth skin can become mistaken for the norm, while perfectly ordinary things — body hair, stretch marks, scars, bumps, pigmentation, ingrown hairs and variations in labia — become sources of insecurity. In writing the article, I wanted to push back against the idea that there is a single way a vulva is supposed to look. Human bodies are varied precisely because they are human. They change throughout our lives, and their differences are not defects to be corrected. I also considered the influence of cosmetic procedures such as labiaplasty, alongside the smaller, everyday rituals of trying to make ourselves more desirable — from removing every trace of body hair to worrying about whether our bodies look “normal” enough to be seen by someone else. One of the references that stayed with me was Sex Education, in which Aimee expresses insecurity about the appearance of her vulva and is shown photographs demonstrating the enormous diversity of vulvas. I loved the simplicity of this moment: sometimes what we need is not correction, but representation. To see other bodies can be enough to realise that there was never anything wrong with ours. The article coincided with Safe + Sexy Week at Monash, making the conversation particularly timely. I wanted the piece to sit somewhere between cultural criticism and reassurance — questioning where these beauty standards come from while acknowledging the very real insecurities they can create. The accompanying artwork was created by the lovely Mia Katherine Nguyen, whose cyanotypes of flowers offered a beautiful visual response to the article. The delicate botanical forms created an unexpected but fitting connection to the subject: natural bodies, like flowers, exist in an extraordinary range of shapes, colours and textures. There is no single template for either. I’m grateful to Esperanto for giving me the space to write about a subject that is so often surrounded by embarrassment or silence, and to Mia for creating such a thoughtful visual accompaniment. Bodies are wonderfully diverse, and none of these realities makes a person less worthy of intimacy.

Esperanto Magazine, The Permanence Edition, Issue 2, 2026 (print) For Esperanto Magazine’s Permanence Edition, I wrote A Love Letter to Wrinkles, a short essay about ageing, the body, and the ways we are taught to fear the visible evidence of time. The prompt immediately interested me. The Permanence Edition asks what it means to preserve something in a world where everything is constantly changing — our relationships, identities, memories and bodies. I wanted to approach that idea through something we are so often encouraged to erase: wrinkles. Wrinkles arrive gradually. A line beside the mouth, a crease around the eyes, a vein becoming more visible beneath the skin. They are ordinary signs of a body moving through time, yet the beauty industry has built an enormous market around convincing us that they are something to correct. Retinols, injectables and facelifts promise to delay or disguise the inevitable. I wanted my piece to resist that idea. A Love Letter to Wrinkles became an ode to the physical traces of having lived. I wrote about crow’s feet gathering around a smile, freckles darkening, skin changing texture and the body quietly recording everything that happens to it. To me, ageing is not evidence of deterioration. It is evidence of survival. The idea that became particularly important to me was the resemblance between ageing skin and the natural world. Wrinkles can resemble the bark of an old tree; veins in a hand echo the branching veins of a leaf; folds of skin recall the creases of cabbage leaves; lines across the back can resemble a landscape shaped by weather and time. Even buildings crack, weather and sag as they age. Nothing in nature remains untouched by time. Why should we? I also created the artwork for the article, photographing a series of ageing bodies alongside photographs of natural textures and forms. I wanted the images to create visual parallels rather than simply illustrate the writing: bark beside wrinkles, leaf veins beside veins in skin, cabbage beside folds of flesh, sky beside the body, freckles beside the markings of the natural world, and crow’s feet beside a smile. The photographs became a kind of visual collage about repetition. The same patterns appear everywhere, suggesting that ageing is not something that separates us from nature, but something that connects us to it. Writing and photographing this piece made me think differently about permanence, too. Perhaps permanence does not mean remaining unchanged. Perhaps it exists in the traces we leave behind — the lines on a face, the photographs we take, the memories attached to a body, and the evidence that we were here. The full article can be read below: Wrinkles arrive quietly. First as faint lines beside the mouth, then soft creases at the corners of the eyes, gathering slowly like folds pressed into fabric over time. We are taught to fear them, to smooth them away before they fully appear. Entire industries exist to erase the evidence that we have lived. Retinols, face-lifts, injectables — promises of permanence through artificial youth. Yet ageing is not failure. It is proof of survival. There is something deeply beautiful about a face that has changed with time. Crow's feet deepen through years of laughter. Foreheads crease through worry, concentration, grief, or tender-ness. Skin loosens, freckles darken, and veins become more visible beneath the surface. The body records everything quietly. It keeps a history of living. Sometimes I think wrinkles resemble landscapes. The bark of a tree splitting and thickening with age. Rivers carving lines through stone. Wilted cabbage leaves folding into themselves at the market. Vines twisting around fences. Even old buildings seem to sag gently under the weight of decades, their surfaces cracked and weathered by sun and rain. Nothing in nature remains untouched by time. Why should we? Nature and the Body — photographic artwork accompanying A Love Letter to Wrinkles To age is to become textured. The body softens around the edges, marked by experience rather than untouched by it. There is an intimacy to this kind of change. I have always loved the way wrinkles gather when someone smiles - how the skin around the eyes folds instinctively before words even arrive. A smile reveals emotion before language does. A body becomes expressive through repetition. There is also privilege in ageing, though we rarely speak about it this way. Not everybody is granted the chance to grow old. To wrinkle is to have moved through time, carrying memories, relationships, heartbreak, boredom, routines, celebrations, ordinary afternoons. The body transforms because life continues to happen to it. Perhaps permanence does not exist in remaining unchanged, but in continuing despite change. The body cannot preserve itself forever, just as flowers wilt, fruit bruises, and seasons shift. Yet there is tenderness in this cycle. Wrinkles remind us that we are temporary, but also that we were here at all. Maybe that is why I find them beautiful. They are not imperfections to erase, but evidence of a life lived fully - delicate lines mapping where a person has been, and all they have managed to survive. Wrinkles remind us that we are temporary but also that we were here at all.

Edition 766 of The Big Issue Australia — "The Big Picture" Interview with Chris Linder, p.20-23. There is something about writing about photography that makes you look at photographs differently. My latest feature for The Big Issue, for the publication’s ‘The Big Picture’ series, began with a collection of photographs by American conservation photographer Chris Linder. The subject was southern rockhopper penguins: tiny, fearless birds that spend their summers scaling almost vertical cliffs in the Falkland Islands to reach their nests. They are also extremely cute. And, as Chris and I discussed, they have a remarkable amount of attitude. I spoke with Chris over Zoom from Melbourne at 11pm, while it was morning on his side of the world. We talked about penguins, photography, conservation and what it means to spend weeks waiting for a photograph that might only exist for a fraction of a second. Chris first photographed penguins in Antarctica in 2007, but it was not until 2017 that he encountered rockhoppers in the Falkland Islands. They quickly became his favourite species. Unlike other penguins, which might walk relatively easily from the beach to their nests, rockhoppers launch themselves through crashing waves before climbing cliffs up to 40 metres high. The photographs capture these moments with an almost cinematic intensity. Penguins appear suspended mid-air, flippers outstretched, waves breaking around them. They look determined, even defiant. But what I found most fascinating was what happens before and after the photograph. Chris spent around two weeks in the field, returning to the same rocky position for hours at a time. He was working in wind, rain and sea spray, constantly cleaning his lens and trying not to be swept from the rocks. He estimates that he came home with around 60,000 images. That completely changed how I looked at the photographs. What appears to be a single spontaneous moment is actually the result of enormous patience, repetition and attention. Chris might shoot 15 to 20 frames a second as a wave approaches, never knowing whether he has captured the exact moment he was waiting for. The camera becomes a way of freezing something that the human eye could barely register. We also talked about the tendency to anthropomorphise animals. Rockhoppers stand upright, move almost like children and have surprisingly individual behaviours. Chris told me that they will sometimes walk between his legs or even peck at his tripod while he is photographing them. But rather than simply projecting human qualities onto them, he sees personality as something that becomes more apparent through sustained observation. The longer you watch an animal, the more you begin to notice its individual behaviours and relationships. That idea stayed with me while writing the piece. Chris describes himself as a conservation photographer, and for him, photography is ultimately a way of making science accessible. A beautiful image can catch someone’s attention, but ideally it makes them ask questions: What am I looking at? Why does this matter? What is happening to these animals? Writing the story became an extension of that process. I was taking images that already told one story and trying to find the words that could open them into another. The result is a small story about some very small birds, but also about patience, observation and the strange ability of photography to make us look more closely at a world we might otherwise never see. You can read the full feature in The Big Issue, Edition 766 or via the article archive on my website.

Detail from Apophenie Junk Pile Apophenie Junk Pile — Catalogue Essay Bonnie-Jean Whitlock Red Gallery, Fitzroy North, June 18 - July 4 Bonnie’s paintings do not begin from representation so much as sensation. Their surfaces register movement through material: pigment absorbed into linen, wax resisting ink, and salt redistributing colour into unpredictable formations. In conversation, Bonnie described her process as collaborative with materials — an ongoing negotiation between intention and response in which materials redirect gestures and introduce moments of resistance, delay, and transformation. Linen remains loosely stretched and responsive, while surfaces are repeatedly reworked by hand. Through these processes, the paintings resist becoming fixed images and instead retain evidence of their own making. Underlying this material process is a sustained engagement with the body — not as something directly depicted but as something distributed across surfaces. During her Masters of Fine Art, Bonnie developed a body mapping process that involved lying across fabric and tracing the shape of her body to capture bodily experience into material form. Different colours, shapes and lines corresponded to sensations, emotional states, and moments of bodily awareness. Fabric became less a support than a site of registration: a surface capable of holding memory, touch, and time. That relationship continues through the current work. Brushstrokes remain visible and raw; pigment stains seep through the reverse of the linen, embedding themselves into the material rather than resting on top of it. Looking at the back of the paintings becomes almost as revealing as viewing the front. The works do not conceal their process — they expose accumulation, absorption, and change. There is a geological quality to this approach. Bonnie spoke about rocks, lichen, layering, and the experience of remaining steady within a shifting world. Her paintings move in a similar way: building slowly through deposits of gesture and material interaction. Feelings emerge indirectly, often through repetition and extended duration rather than immediate expression. What emerges is a practice grounded in tactility and embodied attention. These works do not present a sanitised or detached image of experience; instead they ask what painting can hold. Sensation becomes sedimented into surfaces. Touch remains visible. The work becomes less an image than a record — of contact, resistance, and the ongoing conversation between body and material. Within the context of Apophenie Junk Pile, these paintings can be understood as part of a process of accumulation and reworking where materials and gestures are continually reconnected, reinterpreted and held in relation. Meaning emerges through these unstable linkages — through the same logic of apophenia that draws connections across fragments, residues and dispersed sensations. Detail from Apophenie Junk Pile Reflection Earlier this year, I visited Bonnie-Jean Whitlock in her studio in the lead-up to her exhibition Apophenie Junk Pile. The visit offered an intimate insight into her working process, where she spoke generously about the material logics underpinning her practice — including wax resist techniques, salt dispersal, pigment absorption, and the ongoing responsiveness of linen as a surface. Following this studio visit, Bonnie commissioned me to write a catalogue essay for the exhibition. The writing developed directly from our conversation and from observing the ways her paintings operate through material negotiation rather than fixed representation. It became an opportunity to think closely about how her practice holds sensation, memory, and bodily experience within processes of making that remain visibly unresolved. The essay considers Bonnie’s paintings as sites where material and body are deeply entangled, though not in a direct or illustrative sense. Instead, the works register bodily presence through indirect means: through staining, layering, resistance, and transformation. Pigment seeps into linen, wax interrupts flow, and salt redistributes colour across the surface, producing compositions that feel responsive and alive rather than controlled. Bonnie also discussed her earlier body mapping work developed during her Masters of Fine Art, where fabric became a surface for tracing bodily sensation. Lying across cloth, she translated emotional and physical states into colour and gesture, creating works where the body is present as trace rather than figure. This relationship continues to shape her current paintings, where surfaces act as sites of registration for touch, time, and movement. There is a geological sensibility that runs through the work — a sense of layering, erosion, and accumulation that echoes natural processes such as sedimentation or the growth of lichen. The paintings unfold slowly, building through repeated gestures and material interactions that resist resolution. Rather than offering immediate visual clarity, they hold time within their surfaces. Ultimately, the essay positions Bonnie’s practice as one grounded in tactility and embodied attention. These are works that do not present a detached or sanitised image of experience. Instead, they ask what painting can hold when understood as a record of contact — where sensation becomes embedded within material, and where touch remains visible long after the moment of making. Within the broader context of Apophenie Junk Pile, the works can also be understood as part of an ongoing process of accumulation and reworking, where meaning emerges through fragmented connections between material, gesture, and sensation. In this sense, the exhibition itself operates through a similar logic of apophenia — drawing relationships between dispersed elements to form shifting, unstable readings of experience. It was a pleasure to engage closely with her practice and to consider how writing can extend the material and conceptual concerns of an exhibition beyond the gallery space. Oh, how the mighty have. Oil, ink, wax and glass beads on Linen

Edition 762 of The Big Issue Australia — “New Romantics", Interview with Angourie Rice, p.30-31. A few months ago, I published my first feature with The Big Issue — a conversation with poet Nikita Gill about mythology, girlhood and storytelling. Last month, I had the opportunity to publish a second feature with the magazine, this time interviewing Australian actor and writer Angourie Rice. The piece centred around Finding Emily, a romantic comedy set in Manchester, but our conversation moved far beyond the film itself. We spoke about character building, psychology, writing, creativity, and the strange balancing act between intellect and emotion that sits at the heart of Emily’s story. What struck me most was how much Angourie thinks about storytelling. Whether she was discussing acting, writing novels with her mother, or building a character through costume and music, everything came back to the same idea: how stories help us communicate things we can’t always articulate elsewhere. As someone who works across writing, art and film criticism, I found that particularly interesting. Going into the interview, I expected to talk about filmmaking. Instead, we ended up discussing creative process, character, and the way artists build worlds from small details. Some of my favourite moments were hearing about the films that inspired Finding Emily, the playlists she created for the character, and the thought that went into making Emily feel like a real person rather than a rom-com archetype. The experience itself was also a reminder of how much journalism is built on conversation. Every interview is different. Some feel highly structured; others unfold naturally into unexpected directions. Angourie’s openness made it easy to move between discussing the film, her upcoming novel, and broader questions about creativity. Seeing the finished feature in print has been especially meaningful. It marks my second publication with The Big Issue, and another step in a writing practice that continues to evolve through interviews, criticism and cultural journalism. Looking back, I realise both my features for the magazine have explored people working in very different fields, yet connected by a shared investment in storytelling. Whether through poetry, fiction or film, both conversations returned to the same question: how do we make sense of ourselves through narrative? You can read the full feature in The Big Issue Edition #762 or via the article archive on my website.

Rough & Cut, Coober Pedy Originally published in Esperanto Magazine, The Candid Edition, Issue 1, 2026 (print) Recently, I had the opportunity to interview Melbourne-based photographer Abigail Varney for the first 2026 edition of Esperanto, Monash University’s student arts and culture magazine. The issue, themed Candid, explored ideas surrounding authenticity, observation, and what it means to capture people honestly — concepts that immediately made me think of Varney’s photographic practice. Just before the pitch list for the edition was released, I visited the exhibition Familial at Town Hall Gallery (Hawthorn Arts Centre), where I encountered Varney’s work. Her photographs stayed with me long after leaving the exhibition. There was something deeply attentive about the way she photographed people and environments — moments that felt intimate without becoming intrusive, humorous without feeling performative. When the Through the Expert’s Eye prompt appeared in the pitch list, asking contributors to interview a professional photographer about candid photography and the psychology of the camera, I immediately put my name down and emailed Abigail almost straight away. Varney’s WILJUL in Familial at Town Hall Gallery The interview focused on candid photography: the relationship between photographer, subject, and camera, and the ways photographers navigate authenticity in an image-saturated world. Speaking with Abigail was incredibly insightful, particularly hearing her discuss documentary photography as a process of observation rather than control. She described candid photography as “trying to be unseen,” comparing the photographer to “a fly on the wall,” while also acknowledging the complexities of photographing people in an era where cameras are constantly present. One of the most interesting aspects of our conversation was hearing about how differently people respond to being photographed. Abigail spoke about the importance of patience, trust, and sensitivity — describing the process of building comfort with subjects as a “slow burn.” Rather than forcing a moment, she allows interactions and environments to unfold naturally, embracing unpredictability instead of resisting it. As she reflected during the interview, “nothing is in your control… that’s where the magic happens.” The Dirty Bloomers, my beloved basketball team (2018–ongoing). We also discussed projects including The Dirty Bloomers, her ongoing series photographing her beloved basketball team, and her vibrant photographs from the Parkes Elvis Festival commissioned by The New York Times. Throughout the conversation, what became clear was her deep interest in communities, humour, and the subtle dynamics between people. Her photographs often capture fleeting gestures, interactions, and moments of absurdity that reveal something deeply human. Another particularly moving part of the interview was hearing about the influence of her father’s photography. Abigail described growing up around photographs documenting everyday life, relationships, and moments of humour — images that shaped her understanding of photography as observation rather than performance. That sense of intimacy and attentiveness continues throughout her work today. I’m incredibly grateful to Abigail for being so generous with her time, insight, and photographs throughout this process. Conducting this interview reminded me how valuable conversations with artists can be — not only for understanding creative practice, but for reconsidering the ways we look at people, environments, and everyday moments ourselves. The full article can be read below: In an image-saturated world where a camera is almost always anticipated, the idea of a “candid” moment feels increasingly complex. For Melbourne-based photographer Abigail Varney, candid photography is not simply about spontaneity — it is about navigating presence, distance, and the delicate psychology between photographer and subject. Varney’s connection to candid photography is deeply personal, shaped by her father’s photographs. His work — featuring fragments of everyday life, relationships, and quiet humour — offers an early understanding of photography not as performance, but as observation. Rough & Cut, Coober Pedy. Varney’s practice sits between documentary and portraiture. There is a consistent attentiveness to human behaviour and communities: gestures, glances, and interactions that feel unguarded, even when the camera is not entirely invisible. “The whole part of candid photography is basically trying to be unseen,” she explains. “You’re like a fly on the wall.” In these moments, the photographer recedes, allowing scenes to unfold without direct intervention. Yet this distance is not always fixed. Varney describes how her position shifts depending on whether she is an outsider entering a community or an insider photographing people she already knows. In The Dirty Bloomers, Varney photographs her beloved basketball team; familiarity alters the dynamic — subjects may look back at the camera, acknowledging her presence, but without the stiffness of posed portraiture. The Dirty Bloomers, my beloved basketball team’(2018–ongoing). This tension between visibility and invisibility sits at the core of candid photography. While the aim may be to capture authenticity, the presence of the camera inevitably shapes behaviour. “People want to be perceived in a certain way,” Varney notes. Rather than resisting this, her approach is grounded in patience and sensitivity. Building trust is a “slow burn”: introducing herself, stating her intentions, and gradually allowing subjects to relax into the moment. Over time, guarded performances soften, and something more instinctive begins to surface. Build Up Unlike studio-based portraiture, where lighting, composition, and interaction are carefully controlled, candid photography operates within unpredictability. “Nothing is in your control…you just have to go with it.” Yet it is precisely within this lack of control that something unexpected can emerge, Varney reflects, as “that’s where the magic happens.” For Varney, candid photography reveals a sense of people as they exist within their own rhythms. “They’re doing something — they’re not posing for you… it’s like a 3D live mode,” she explains. In contrast, portraiture can sometimes produce what she describes as a “fake bond,” a constructed intimacy between photographer and subject that feels fundamentally different from the unscripted interactions of everyday life. How the King of Rock ’n’ Roll Still Makes Australia Sing, Parkes Elvis Festival (commissioned by The New York Times, 2022). Her photographs frequently capture moments of humour and subtle absurdity, particularly within communal settings. In her ‘Parkes Elvis Festival’ series, commissioned by ‘The New York Times’, she recalls an image of two figures in earnest conversation, dressed as Elvis Presley. Framed by out-of-focus impersonators in the foreground, the composition gently obscures and reveals, heightening the scene’s character and ambiguity. How the King of Rock ’n’ Roll Still Makes Australia Sing, Parkes Elvis Festival (commissioned by The New York Times, 2022). In large, celebratory environments like festivals, subjects often welcome the camera, performing for it rather than retreating from it. In smaller or more intimate settings, however, trust becomes essential. Varney adapts to each situation intuitively, emphasising that there is “no real framework” for working with people — only a responsiveness to the energy of each encounter. Ultimately, candid photography resists a singular definition. It exists somewhere between observation and participation, control and surrender. For Varney, its power lies in its openness: an ability to hold contradiction, to capture both the performed and the unguarded at once. In relinquishing control, the photograph recognises a moment — fleeting, imperfect, and, perhaps because of that, real. Esperanto Magazine, The Candid Edition, Issue 1, 2026 (print)

Originally published in Esperanto Magazine, The Explorer Edition, Issue 4, 2025 (print) The full article can be read below: The Nicholas Building elevator has a way of making me feel like I’m travelling somewhere secret. The doors close, the world outside blurs and when they open, I’ve arrived in a quieter part of the city. Not higher, exactly — just elsewhere. I think that’s what keeps drawing me back to Melbourne’s smaller galleries — places like Blindside Artist Run Initiative, CAVES, No Vacancy, fortyfivedownstairs — those rooms tucked inside old buildings, cafés or hidden behind restaurant staircases. Sometimes it’s even further out, like Heide or Villa Alba, the old mansion that hosted Melbourne’s first Sculpture Biennial last year. The elaborate trompe l’oeil murals there transport you from the quiet suburbs of Kew to far-off landscapes. At the Spring1883 Art Fair, held in the gilded rooms of the Windsor Hotel, the same feeling unfolded — contemporary works folding themselves into patterned carpets and chandeliers, proof that art is always in conversation with its surroundings. It isn’t the spectacle or the prestige that matters to me. It’s the way the city shifts when I step inside these spaces. Time loosens. Tightness begins to soften. In those rooms, art isn’t something to hurry through — it’s something to breathe with. It shifts and changes depending on where it’s held — always shaped by the space around it. I keep coming back to art not just for its beauty, but for the way it helps me make sense of things I can’t always put into words. It reminds me how to feel again, quietly — through texture, colour and the smallest of gestures. There’s something about the way art holds contradiction that I find comforting: joy and sorrow, stillness and movement, solitude and connection. Walking through an exhibition becomes a kind of private ritual. I bring my phone, camera and journal and let the world slow down. Sometimes, in those small rooms, I remember that thinking doesn’t always need to be loud in order to mean something. People often talk about Melbourne’s “arts scene” as though it’s confined to institutions — the archives and marble floors of the National Gallery of Victoria, or the clean certainty of a state collection. But there are so many more spaces than that. There are artist-run initiatives hidden above stores. Pop-up shows in old warehouses. Newly-opened galleries run by young curators like Hayden’s Gallery who pour everything they have into keeping them alive. Some of the most moving work I’ve seen recently wasn’t in a museum — it was in a hallway in Fitzroy, or a tiny room overlooking Swanston Street. Maybe that’s my version of exploring —tracing a path through the overlooked corners of my own city. The underground isn’t always dark or edgy. Sometimes it’s tender. Sometimes it’s being the only visitor in a gallery and realising you’re allowed to stand there for as long as you need. There’s a kind of strength in the early career art scene. It’s constantly shifting, like a living thing. That’s part of what makes it so beautiful: you can never step into the same space twice. The shows change every few weeks. The walls get repainted. The light moves on. But something stays with you — the memory of a line, or a shadow, or a quiet moment that made you feel less alone. Art doesn’t solve anything. It doesn’t erase grief or make life less confusing. But it offers you a different way of holding it. And maybe that’s why I keep returning to these spaces — to remember how to sit with everything that doesn’t quite make sense and to find, in the cracks and corridors of this city, a small reminder that I’m not the only one searching for meaning. Cultivating Melbourne’s Art Scene, artwork by Jennifer Chen, Esperanto Magazine, The Explorer Issue, Vol. 4, 2025 (print).

Edition 759 of The Big Issue Australia — “Goddess Only Knows”, p.30-31. There is something strangely disorienting about seeing your work in print for the first time. Not on a screen, not in a draft folder, not in a Google Doc you can endlessly adjust — but fixed. Held. Circulating in the world without you. My recent feature on Nikita Gill, published in The Big Issue (Edition 759), began as a conversation about myth and girlhood. But somewhere in the process, it became something else — a reflection on voice, on who gets to speak, and what it means to write from within structures that don’t always make space for you. The process of writing it was one thing. The process of editing it — of letting it shift, soften, expand for a broader audience — was another. I think this is something I’m still learning: writing doesn’t exist in isolation. It moves through other people. Through editors, publications, readers. It becomes collaborative, even when it starts as something deeply personal. There were moments where I felt protective over certain phrases, certain rhythms. Moments where I wondered if the piece was still entirely mine. But seeing it now, in its final form, I can recognise something else — not a loss of voice, but an evolution of it. A translation. Being published in The Big Issue also carries a weight beyond the writing itself. It’s a publication that exists within a social framework, one that directly supports vendors and communities. That context matters. It changes how the work sits in the world. This feels like a beginning. Not in a dramatic sense, but in a quiet, steady one. Something that says: this is possible. You can read the full piece via the link on my website, or in print through The Big Issue.

Scars of Site, 2026, Poem and digital photograph For World Poetry Day, I wanted to share a piece that sits at the edge of language — where writing begins to fail slightly, and the body takes over. The poem below began with a question that felt difficult to articulate directly:what happens to the body when something is seen that cannot be un-seen? We often think of vision as passive — as something that simply receives the world. But this poem resists that idea. It understands seeing as an event. Something that enters, alters, and remains. The lines move through the language of damage and adaptation: scorching, clouding, softening. The eye becomes not just an organ of perception, but a site of negotiation — caught between exposure and protection. What begins as clarity gradually becomes something more unstable, more defensive. Vision shifts from openness to refusal. This is where the body becomes central. Because the poem suggests that when the mind cannot process something fully, the body intervenes. It adjusts perception. It blurs. It filters. Not as failure — but as survival. What began to interest me was the idea that the eyes themselves might respond — not just emotionally,  As if vision could scar. In the poem, the irises are imagined as something that has been burned — held too long in proximity to something unbearable. Not destroyed, but altered. Marked. The suggestion of cataracts forming becomes less medical and more symbolic: a thin veil growing across the surface of sight, not as failure, but as intention. A self-made obstruction. As though the body, unable to erase what has been seen, attempts instead to dim it. To soften its edges. To place something — anything — between itself and the image. It is not blindness. It is refusal. And yet, the poem resists the idea that this strategy can ever fully succeed. Because even when vision is interrupted, the image does not disappear. It relocates. It persists behind the eyes — fixed, internal, unreachable. Something that returns in fragments, especially in moments of stillness. In darkness. In the quiet just before sleep. You can close your eyes, but you cannot unsee. That tension — between wanting not to see and being unable to forget — sits at the centre of the work. And perhaps that is where it becomes most personal. Because the body does not simply witness. It carries. The idea that  “clarity itself had become dangerous”  is crucial here. It reframes visibility not as truth, but as risk. Beneath the poem, the image operates as a visual extension of this idea. A face appears behind water filled glass — distorted, partially obscured. The surface is marked with droplets that could be condensation, breath, or time itself. They resemble tears, but never fully resolve into them. The figure is visible, but not fully accessible. Most importantly, the eye — the site of perception — is present, yet disrupted. It is seen, but not clearly.It looks, but cannot fully hold what it sees. The image and the poem work together to explore a shared tension: the impossibility of clean vision. There is always interference. Always a surface. Always something between. Even the structure of the poem reflects this. Certain lines are tightened — the spacing between letters reduced: It marks. There it is again. as though clarity itself had become dangerous. But the body does not forget. These moments interrupt the visual rhythm of the text. They feel compressed, almost held in place. Less like lines to be read, and more like points of pressure — where language condenses into something harder, more insistent. They do not flow. They resist. That resistance mirrors the poem’s central idea: that some experiences do not integrate smoothly into narrative or memory. They return in fragments. They interrupt. They insist on being felt rather than explained. What remains, in the end, is not a clear image, but an internal one. An afterimage. Something that no longer exists in front of the body, but continues to exist within it — lodged behind the eyes, beyond reach, beyond language. Poetry, at its most precise, does not resolve this kind of experience. It doesn’t offer closure. It simply gives it form. I think this is why I’m drawn to writing like this — where the line between seeing and feeling dissolves. Where the body speaks in ways language can only partially hold. Full poem below: Scars of Sight Seeing is not passive. It enters the body. It marks. There are images that do not leave politely— they press themselves into the softest part of vision and stay there, unmoving. At first it was only a brightness. A kind of overexposure. As if the world had been held too close to flame. Then something in the eyes began to change. The irises— once clear, reflective— felt scorched, like glass left too long in heat. I began to imagine a thin film forming just beneath the surface, a clouding, a slow and careful obscuring, as though the body were trying to grow its own curtain. Not blindness— something more deliberate than that. A refusal. Because there are things the eyes should not have to carry. And yet they do. Even closed, the image persists— fixed behind the lids like an afterburn, like light that has nowhere else to go. I learned the way it returns without warning— in the dark, in quiet rooms, in the small pause before sleep when the body softens and the mind loosens its grip. There it is again. Not whole— never whole— but in fragments: a colour a movement a shape that cannot be unnamed enough to know too much to escape. The body, always adapting, began its quiet work. If the world wounds through sight, then sight must be altered. So the eyes dimmed themselves— softened edges blurred distances let detail dissolve as though clarity itself had become dangerous. As though to see less might be a form of survival. I wondered if this is how forgetting begins— not as absence but as interference, a gentle distortion laid carefully over memory like gauze over a wound. But the body does not forget. It stores. It reroutes. It buries light in darker places. And so the image remains, not in front of me but within me— stitched somewhere behind the eyes, where no hand can reach it, where no closing of the lids can undo what has already been seen. Some images do not leave. They change the way we see everything that comes after.