PSYCHOPOMP OF EMERALD CITY

PSYCHOPOMP OF EMERALD CITY: An exhibition of drawings at bargoonga nganjin library, october 30 2025 - january 25 2026

A psychopomp is a guide between worlds, a ferryman to the other side of mortality. For a long time I’ve asked myself: where do we go when we look at an artwork? Are we here, in there, or both? For me, the aim in making is always to be imaginatively transported – to shift, even momentarily, into another place.

In Psychopomp of Emerald City, I chase this idea through a series of large drawings on paper. These works reconfigure fragments of the everyday into surreal tableaux: a mashup of architecture from my Clifton Hill neighbourhood, geological motifs, classical references, and elements from fictional narratives.

The exhibition draws inspiration from 1939’s Wizard of Oz and 1985’s Return to Oz, which formed my first real understanding of how art and film can wormhole passages between worlds, and that the veil between ordinary life and other-worlds can be easily crossed. The Emerald City as it exists in both films -- both gleaming and devastated, bearing hope and horror -- has, over time, become shorthand for my own imaginative crossings. A reminder that even when we return to the same artwork, or the same film, the place we arrive is never the same as when we left it.