At last, a stirring in the rubble of my creative life.

Great things have happened this week. It has been one of the best weeks for me since arriving back in Australia.

I have found a wonderful artists’ community site called CultureInside, which is run by Gila and Dominique Paris. It has a vibrant collective of artists and has been the hub for important activity and communication about the arts.

At CultureInside, I met with Volker Schuetz, who was calling for artists to get involved with “Galerie Verticale”, a show which will run from April 30th 2008 to May 4th, at The Silo, Saarbruecken, Germany.

The Silo, which looks a lot like the one near me in Collingwood (below), will host vertical images in the 4:1 ratio, which will be printed with an old black & white Xerox machine then to be painted by the Silogroup.

I have also this week been invited to be part of a group show called “Souped up Pontiac”, to be held at MONA, the artspace of Jef Bougeau, Detroit. It will open on May 10th and feature a group of 12 artists from all over the world.

I will post more information about Souped up Pontiac as is becomes available.

How refreshing to have time again. To experience a momentary reprieve from working to pay bills.

The last week has been incredible. People will ask when I return to work: “what did you do?”. I’ll answer: “nothing, absolutely nothing”.

Actually my answer will be false, but it will be necessary, as in their eyes, I have done nothing. The truth will be that my week off has been like a breath of fresh air and with it a breeze of hope for the future.

I have spent time with my family and enjoyed being around them, in their presence. I have relaxed and yet had the time to research things that interest me and that are important. Remarkably, I’ve also written to friends whom I haven’t had time to keep in touch with in a whole year. Most essentially, I have had time to work with photography again. It’s been a real joy to play with images again and reflect on the nature of photography.

To have done these simple things, has been incredible to me. It’s also reminded me that I haven’t always felt jaded, used-up and on the edge; that another way might be possible.

To be able to strike a balance between the essential, and the necessary in life is vital. However, lately it seems that it is becoming more elusive to me. I seem to be working harder but for less. I don’t expect the greatest material comforts, I’m willing to sacrifice those things for the more important things in life. But even to work for the basic needs of life has become more demanding. The fights that the working class fought and won in the past have one by one been called back. Education, health, 8 hour working day, state services.

I know from speaking with friends that they have experienced unreasonable demands on their time and resources, just to keep their heads afloat. It seems that the recent “good times” have been fuelled by our governments throwing our hard won rights on the bonfire. Some of us have been tricked by the light and allowed them to sell it as economic progress, etc.

Others of us know that the time was always going to come for ‘pay-back’, and that the progress wasn’t ever progress anyway.

For myself, I merely wish that at some point in the near future I can do something that allows me to escape “working for the man” and to return to the more essential and important things in life: family, political consciousness and art.

I’ve often wondered at why the street proves so elusive to me in Australia? Or, what is it about the street in other cities that attracts me?

The fact is: In terms of photography, my practice turns completely inward when working in Australia and this is becoming very interesting to me.

When I first arrived here in Australia, back in ‘96, it was a source of massive frustration, confusion and anger. I’d been working back in Dublin and really just finding my feet. I had been working with a contemporary, Joe Owens at that time. We were exploring street photography for ourselves.

I hadn’t been consciously following some of the seminal street photographers like Frank, Winogrand, Friedlander and Klein; or much of their work. I wasn’t even very aware of it at the time. But there was certainly an energy about the street and charged up web of complex narratives that were constantly being played out there, on the streets of Dublin. To discover this energy and sometimes tap into it was exciting and sometimes even frightening.

It ended fairly abruptly when I arrived on Australia’s shores; despite plunging straight into a creative environment, at university.

Perhaps it was the wide open spaces and predominance of roads and vehicles that changed the dynamic. The light was another thing. Compared to what I had been used to, it seemed harsh and unforgiving, hiding as much as it revealed in its stark shadows.

I also sometimes wonder if it isn’t perhaps the interaction between people which is different here.

These days I feel the urge to paint, more than ever. Or maybe it’s that I wonder if painting would not allow me to describe my emotions better; to go further than the pictures that I see as photographs.

I’m probably the last person on the Internet to open one of these accounts at Flickr. At the moment I’m having fun experimenting with the interface and learning how to use it. I’m thinking that I will use it to show an edited selection of my images. Whereas with my photoblog I had used it to show a kind of continuous edit: as I was producing the images, I was editing them on the fly and uploading them.

These days my output has slowed down considerably and I’m tending more towards looking back through film that I shot before, and the images from Korea. I think that Flickr is going to be useful to organise some of these images and show them at the same time.

The interface is quite amazing. And it’s great the way it interacts with the user and has a dynamic feel. Probably the strongest potential is the way that it allows other people with like interests to easily see what interests them and form personal networks.

I have to thank my friend, Joe Owens for persisting with me and encouraging me to open one of these accounts.

Flat, featureless, car humming, impersonal suburbs. Fences, walls and roads; neighbours ducking out of front doors and into cars. One division after another. The enemy of thought and pill of despair. The last place I wanted to be, yet with somewhat bitter irony, just like the place where I grew up, albeit in some suburb on the other side of the planet. History repeats. If god exists, he has a twisted sense of humour.

So here I am. Stuck it would seem. Have not been to an art gallery or place of culture in two years now. The struggle for existence has taken absolute precedence. The numbness of being stuck in a corner; paying bills and debts. Knowing that the prime of your life is being sucked through a straw.

Oh yes, the suburbs. Sweet, sweet suburbia.