All a long longing

2018–2024

All a long longing is an immersive installation that explores longing, shelter, and interdependence through mistletoe, sound, vibration, and textile. The work attends to how care is felt and carried through bodies shaped by distance and relation.

Mistletoe haustoria carved into stone-like forms sit elevated in the centre of a darkened room. The forms are softly lit, holding a low, breathing glow. They rest on an oval false floor that emits vibrational sound composed of fire, forest, and human voice. Sound moves through the body as vibration rather than through the ear alone.

Australian native mistletoe, long misunderstood, is now recognised as a connective keystone plant. Haustoria form where mistletoe interweaves with its host. These knots are traces of relation, two beings becoming inseparable while remaining distinct.

Beneath the stones, the soundtrack functions as a sensory hearth. Vibration gathers the body into the space. Warmth appears as a condition created through relation rather than fuel.

Four large blankets hang around the central floor, catching and diffusing light. These digitally printed textiles bring together body, land, and sensorimotor mark-making. Fragments of skin, grain, gesture, and trace gather across their surfaces as partial figures and terrains.

“I hope this fits and helps to keep you warm.”

In the 1990s I moved from the subtropics to Melbourne and became estranged from much of my family. My paternal grandmother, whose family were early immigrants to Kabi Kabi Country, knitted garments and sent them with this message. They rarely fit, yet they were held as acts of care arriving across distance and silence.

The blankets shelter the hearth. They function as veils and coverings, holding a desire for familiarity, intimacy, and protection. Warmth is present here as both material and gesture.

None of the elements resolve easily within their given forms. Stone becomes soft. Sound becomes touch. Blankets become architecture. The installation holds a longing for home without resolving it.

All a long longing sits alongside Everything is Speaking as a site of learning. Where the later work attends to symbiosis at ecological scale, this installation remains with the nervous system. Interdependence is felt personally. Reliance is allowed to register. Shelter forms through relation rather than certainty.

All a long longing.