deb mostert

My name is Deb Mostert and I am a contemporary visual artist living and working in Ipswich, Queensland. I am asking for your help with a project I have in progress.

As an artist I am interested in objects and my practice has grappled with the values we assign them and the containers that they become for memory and ideology. I have been talking with friends and people I know who had objects salvaged from the floods that hit Queensland so hard in 2011. Their stories of loss and redemption are touching and often heartbreaking. I see value in recording and remembering the losses and the stories of recovery through these paintings and subsequent exhibitions.

I'd love to partner with you in telling these stories through both paintings and text.

I am using my personal connections with people and asking them to nominate precious objects redeemed from the flood waters. Objects that came back to them, objects that were salvaged from the mud, objects that hold some measure of memory and value.

They become sacred, containing grief, loss, redemption and hope. A lament on the transience of all things, they are painted as modern day Dutch still life Vanitas or Flower Paintings, venerated because of all the human experiences they represent.

I am painting them as precious artifacts, on a plinth or in a niche or the lone item on an empty shelf, alluding to the things lost that are no more.

I hope to record the accompanying stories in text in catalogue form so this is where you come in!

Can you help me raise the funds I need to design and print the catalogue so that through both my paintings and people’s anecdotes these narratives on what we value can be captured and shared.

The $2000 I have set as my minimum amount will go towards the design and printing of the catalogue and framing costs. I require about $5000 to totally fund the materials, framing, documenting, design and printing of a catalogue. I would love to see the exhibition touring through regional areas after it's initial exhibition at the Ipswich Art Gallery in January/Feb 2013 and move through flood affected centres including Rockhampton, Bundaberg, Miles and Gympie. This would require further funding help and any extra funding help will go towards touring the show.

During the deluge, water sucked and swallowed, swirled and shifted so many things. Debris and the remains of people's possessions ended up in strange places. Objects were plucked from homes sometimes never to be found again. Some things however, came back!

Here's just one of the stories I'll be sharing:

‘Marty and Becky were away on holiday when their family home in the western suburbs of Brisbane was overtaken by flood waters. Some time afterwards they received a phone call from a bloke who’ picked up an Aussie rules football with their phone number on it in texta pen. He wanted to know if he could send it back to them. Marty gratefully accepted and gave him their address. Silence followed on the phone and when Marty asked when he’d found the ball, the man’s puzzling reply was that he’d picked it up on the beach at Mooloolaba! Had the ball really been able to travel that far, from their garage, bobbing along in the flooded waterways and up the Brisbane River into the Bay and beyond? They will never know for sure but how great was it to get it back, something that came back out of the waters.

Becky has her own object which came back to her. Weeks after the flood when all that was left in the backyard was stinking mud; Becky stood watching her kids play. She tumbled what she thought was a rock under her foot. She dug down into the mud meaning to hurl it away but to her delight she wiped it clean to reveal her grandmothers’ locket with her silver thimble still inside. She had stood on the only spot in a sea of mud in all that acreage that concealed such a personal family treasure! For Becky, It became something of a symbol of hope and redemption in the cruel times of cleanup to follow.’

Wauchope Family Objects. 62 x 46 cm oil on board 2012

Still life drawing workshops will be held in conjunction with any exhibitions and may hopefully aid the healing process as stories can be swapped and shared and support can be offered through connections with the various agencies available. Many people are only just starting to process the losses they have suffered. I’d hope that by sharing stories they will be acknowledged and not feel forgotten by a throwaway society that tries to move on so quickly from pain and loss..

As you partner with me, I will keep you up to date with the project, documenting and sharing the painting process through my Facebook page and my website and on this Pozible page.

www.debmostertartist.com.au

https://www.facebook.com/deb.mostert.7