Trees and Language

Last week a wonderful friend and old colleague came to the garden to talk about a possible project that we would research to continue the flow of ideas that we have been working on for over 20 years.
We wondered what the drivers were for the impulse to work in a particular way. Why was language, representation and collaboration so important to us? We shared many deep thoughts about family, early experiences and the need to understand the motivating forces that impacted on us as artist and researcher.

Our slow but animated conversation led us to think about the creative elements that might inform some work in our much loved city with families who want to share their histories in new ways. 'Literacies to heal' which might include collage and oral histories felt like a good place to start. The ease of cutting and sticking and the sense of (re)forming, and making new images from old (memory) flowed through our discussion.
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Each family tree made up of a direct but different language that can be shared between generations.