The broad plan is that through this blog TECAC will make contact with other artists who live and work at the edges, beyond the vast realm of the mainstream and  then want to step across the boundaries to journey through new territories and return home refreshed.

The collective has decided to publish on the web, because we are committed to engaging in wide ranging dialogue, particularly with regionally based artists: by bringing our art all the way from Gooram Gooram Gong to the web, we hope to continue and expand our collaboration.

It might take us a while to get up this up and running, but we have to start somewhere, so here goes.

First of all I should explain how writing poetry brought me to The Collective
Twelve years ago when I began my landscape journal in which I intended to track the details and nuances of my remote valley tucked away at the southern end of the Strathbogies [about 45 minutes from Gooram Gooram Gong] in the hope of capturing or uncovering the elusive concept of landscape. As I wrote from day to day, occasionally I would read an essay or a poem that would give me an insight but essentially the subtle energies and processes of the natural world stayed beyond my grasp or should I say my words.

I will continue to write my journal, as it is an essential to my writing practice and will have more to say about that later on, but my breakthrough into the world beyond landscape as vista came when Susan and I met at a meeting of our local arts council a few years ago and started talking about how important landscape was to our art. Soon we began sharing our sources of inspiration [and some of our favourite quotes will be posted here later] and responding to each other’s work. I wrote some poetry responding to and building on Susan’s expressions and interpretations of place in textile and my poems could emphasise layers of meaning expressed in her textiles.  

Next, at Peter’s suggestion, he and Susan took her textiles out of their gallery spaces back to Gooram. You will see in the book what happened.
Through collaboration with Susan and Peter I have found a context, other than an autobiographical or personal one, for my writing. Sometimes now, it’s hard to know when one person’s work ends and the next begins.

While the solitary contemplation that my geographical isolation permits, and I enjoy, is central to my writing practice, the dialogue that has supported the collaboration between Susan, Peter and myself has enabled me to travel out beyond the confines of language and into the evocative spaces between the words, where the soul of the landscape resides and the spirit of Gooram Gooram Gong, or any other place for that matter is most active.

As time goes by, in the spirit of acting locally while thinking globally we will wander away from Gooram Gooram Gong to other interesting places. We intend to travel in loops and detours. Because our art reframes the landscape, and through dialogue we constantly question our assumptions because we must continually renew our connections avoid complacency.

In future visits to this space too you will see more of the work of the other current members of the Collective - Susan Fell McLean and Peter Ward.