A Hope to Wish For on a Star continues an ever-adventuring process of translation, where invented systems correlate colours to letters of the alphabet to re-write textual sources into a visual space. Every letter A is a stroke of cadmium red, every letter B cobalt blue, and so on, until what was once a written text exists only as a curling gradient line, or scattered ceramic shapes, relocated to a new dialect of abstraction and material. This movement of meaning from one language to another offers the painted space as a field of world-building, with surfaces taking on the roles of new and unknown cultures to house these invented lexicons. The contexts created around these translated writings—blended marbled backgrounds of accumulated and countless individual small brushstrokes—perform the labour of a devotional search for understanding within the flawed and slipping forms of communication that connect us. 

This series of paintings and ceramic works are an anthology of texts, including personal writings, collected offerings from past rituals, and published literary works of poetry and prose, that consider themes of love, hate, hope and fear. Together, these collected and translated texts offer a space where the intimacies of intense and sincere feelings can be shared and cared for by one another. Challenging the structures of a contemporary world that impose isolation and separation, this work hopes to orchestrate an opportunity for genuine connection. 

Presented alongside these meditations on love, hate, hope and fear is a participatory exchange that invites the public to take part in the ritual of translation. Visitors are asked to offer a love, a hate, a hope or a fear and leave it behind in exchange for a small ceramic star. The four-pointed star points to these four axes of feeling, asking that we consider all of them as balances between the tensions of intimacy. This exhibition is offered as a contemplation of how our actions and words influence our communities in the constant economy of everyday conversations and social interactions. It seeks to create a space to share our sincerities, and have a meaningful exchange of thoughts and feelings, and to feel, and know and understand one another. 

(photos courtesy of Latitude 53)