Fems issue 8 excerpt

Page 1


Bambi Johnson Melbourne

Soft Shell Inkjet on cotton rag


Freya Alexander Melbourne


Eliza Stribling Melbourne

Invisible Digital artwork


Vonne Beyer Melbourne

‘I strongly suspect that lack of control is a key cause of depression. Lack of trust, lack of hope. The dark. May 23

2017’


Brigit Lambert Melbourne

Outburst Digital illustration


Alice Fennessy Melbourne


Anna MacNeill Melbourne

Small collections of colours and threads remind me of you, And of my mother’s family.

Oma’s threads Embroidery thread, twine


Sally Anne Jovic Melbourne

Waiting

I am desperate to return to the myth of this. In my mind’s eye, a tapestry of reprieve: your face still smiling, my mouth ringed with saliva and smoke. I'm embarrassed to still need this. My hands are frozen open, waiting.


Lucy Roleff Melbourne

On The Track Opposite: Night Rest Colour pencil on paper


Devana Senanayake Melbourne

A Snippet on Preconceptions VS Memories I had heard lots of stories about Tasmania. These stories set fire to my easily extinguishable imagination. I had seen snaps off people’s phones, photoshopped sceneries and “must-see” lists. I had built a puzzle of romanticised images. Since my childhood, I had been an Anglophile. The Tasmania I fantasised about looked very Eurocentric. Upon my arrival, the landscape looked very Australasian. Yes, it did turn out to be lush and green, but the vegetation had a distinctly Australian feel to it. To me, the quintessential Australian landscape is full of shrubs, coarse grass and red sand. Tasmania had elements of that image. My journey consisted of stops at Hobart, Maria Island, Freycinet National Park and Mt Field National Park. I remember that my sense of sight, smell and taste all blended together. Hobart on a cold spring evening smelled strongly of the sea – a misty sea. I remember the eucalyptus that spiralled through the trees, the terrace houses and the sailboats. I have a distinct memory of sleeping in a blue room that overlooked a purple sunset after a scrumptious meal of curried mussels. I also remember the taste of wood fire on the tip of my tongue in a hostel near Freycinet. The top of Mt Field National Park turned out to be full of alpine forests. It lacked a smell though – everything about it felt still, grey and surgical. An alien landscape. I found that I had to discard my coarse preconceptions. Instead, I strung together the chords of memory to build a different tapestry of Tasmania. A Tasmania built out of synaesthesia.


Kathleen Bowie Sydney

How to come back from the dead Though the stairs are steep and the door creaks go up to the attic and breathe in the cobwebs, the darkness, the dust that tastes like threadbare years and smooth your soothing palms over the rough lips of boxes that want to be opened, to smell the sun and stretching sky. Stand at the silent centre And speak the secret I remember I remember I remember


Tegan Iversen Melbourne

my confidence (lost & found) Fineliner & digital colouring


Ruby Perryman Melbourne

Ode to breath In after chugging your large rice milk flat white in a rush to catch the tram Out as you leave Coles with an unweighed onion in your tote In before you duck under the showerhead and scrub your face with apricot Out after an orgasm after thrusting for twenty-two minutes In, before telling mum you think you might like girls too Out when you slide back under the covers after getting up for a piss in the night In of a ciggie, sitting on a milk crate in your backyard at four in the afternoon Out when you’ve finished reading this aloud

Percolator A pair of small stray rabbits hop about in the backyard under the big willow tree in the morning. The brown one always shows up first, waits patiently for the black at the base. She watches them when she wakes before him and percolates a single coffee. When he wakes he says “good morning” and kisses her on the head and percolates two coffees, another for her and one for himself too. By midday the rabbits hop away and he goes off to work at the station and she reads and writes and waits patiently. One day she adopts a dog from the shelter to pass the time, she lets it outside for a piss and it eats the black rabbit right up. One day he doesn’t return from the station. The neighbours come over in the evening and say “he was a good man” and feed her soup but still she waits. She wakes up and percolates a single coffee. She looks out at the big willow tree and the small brown rabbit sits at the base. Waits.


Bindy James Brisbane

Find Your Way Home Digital art


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