Jarrah chronicles

Hello friends,

If you are receiving this introduction email, you are a beloved recipient of a recycled jarrah offcut. This is the first email to announce dates and to ensure we have found everyone who intends to be involved in the show, so be aware there will be subsequent emails with more details as we move closer to the opening.  

(You may know other people who were also given a piece in my travels over the past year, who has not received this missive. If so, please be kind enough to forward this email to them, and/or let me know that they have a piece so I can add them to my database.)

When I handed over a deep red-brown and possibly funny-shaped piece of wood, I asked you to join me in making a work for this previously untitled exhibition. The promise was it would be held in a house (likely still a building site at that time,) at a date to be determined. The general message was; “Just take the wood and await further instruction!”

Thank you for your patience, we are now homed, and this is your long-promised detail.

Thus runs the intro email for artists invited to contribute a work or two to a show that will debut in my house this December. The exhibition, titled Home-ful, asks artists, jewellers, object-makers, architects, designers and a builder or two to interact with a piece of wood, in any way they choose.

This post exists as I was a little haphazard in my invitations to join the project – I started handing out wood when I had the opportunity to catch a bunch of makers all at once, in places far from Boorloo/Perth. Thus, if you have received a jarrah offcut from me when I visited Naarm/Melbourne last year, or while I was on the lands of the Eora Nation – Sydney – for the MAKE prize in October ’25, or a quick trip I made to see the Biennale earlier this year, then please get in touch!

I salvaged offcuts of this rare timber from our recent building project over the years of the build, and started sharing them before the build was even finished! Now I’ve started plans for the exhibition I have some key dates and other info to share 😉

And if you’re not in possession of a piece of jarrah and you are in or about Naarm and would like to be, come to the opening of a 3-person show featuring myself, Tom Burless and Minhi Park at Alta Forma on the 5th of September. I’ll be showing new works and will have a little collection of jarrah to share. For everyone else, you can look forward to the show opening on the 9th of December 🙂