Cha-no-ma garden

C3 gallery, Abbotsford Convent
Exhibition: Garden is not a Rational Act
curated by Tai Snaith, 2017
https://www.c3artspace.com.au/gardening-is-not-a-rational-act/

Cha-no-ma garden
Earlier this year, I had a chat with the gardener here at the Abbotsford Convent. One story from that day particularly inspired me and catalyzed many ideas: the nuns who lived here at the Convent planted a large garden full of secret herbs, which were used for making remedies, teas, and chartreuse. 

A cup of tea means a lot in the world. In Japan, Cha no ma（茶の間）is a ‘living room’, it literally means ‘a space for a cup of tea’. This is the centre of family life, however it is also a shared space for both social and personal use. Cha solves everything, physical conditions as well as relationships. My grandparents had a big cha no ma and a garden where they grew many flowers and herbs; this is one of my favourite childhood memories. 

I wanted to start gathering the disparate fragments from both the Convent history, my own cha no ma memories and my personal garden, bringing them together for this exhibition to create a space, along with my everyday craft practice of weaving and tying knots. Plants always play a crucial role in my practice, as a powerful symbol of life force and to represent the idea of impermanence. The theory of ‘Rhizome’ is the central framework for my practice: no beginning or end, always in the middle, in-between stages. Here at c3, I am capturing in a small moment, a multiplicity of time both personal and site-specific, of processes and of cultural practices, these complex systems interconnect through the prism of my practice to become a new whole. 
This installation is part of an ongoing investigation into no-waste philosophies woven throughout everyday life and into process-based practice; I also explore these concepts through Slow Art Collective, of which I am the founding member.