Shrine Online
Now that Shrine has been set up, opened and now out there I thought I would share the Multi Media component of the exhibition now on at the Supreme Court in Darwin.
My motives for embarking on this project were mixed, I my first memory is of a car accident that we happened along on a lonely stretch of the Flinders Highway, the death of the first person that was close to me was my best mates little sister at the age of 17, I was utterly drained from a tumultulous couple of years crossing the country and the world and needed to be somewhere else for a while, and at that time being in a car with no fixed destination was the best place to be.
As I drove I thought about the grieving families I met in the aftermath of the 2002 Bali bombings , both in Sydney and later in Kuta as people tried to deal with such a mindless act that tore apart their lives and changed forever the way they saw the world because the ones they loved the most were no longer in it.
I started to slow down when I passed a cross on the highway, started to get out of the car, then started to photograph, now seeing, now knowing the depth of the emotions that drove those left behind to build some reminder to their loved one who left them on the worst day of their lives.
But to make the work honest and real I had to find out the story behind at least some of these places and that meant convincing firstly the Downes family,
mainly Terry and Val to talk about the death of their son Aaron and Nerida Noble to talk about her friend J-Bird, both of whom died 6 months apart not 20 km away from each other on the Stuart Highway north of Katherine , these photographs were technically easy to take, sometimes lit, sometimes not but any chance successful communication that this project may have, would be nil without the generosity, compassion and trust that I encountered with Terry and Val Downes and Nerida Noble, so I thank you all.