Vulnerability

2 panels: 80 x 38 cm; 164.9 x 62.6 cm; eucalypt bark, leaves, glass, fabric, acrylic, button, wood; paper bark, mirror. Since a very young child, trees have been my friends. Trees teach me so much. Here I explore vulnerability. From 2006 – 2014 I explored many aspects of vulnerability including the ways in which new growth occurs in walled off places of the heart. During this time, Panel 1 grew around the bark of a tall eucalypt gum from my front garden. Panel 2, as yet unformed, began in 2014 as I walked in the bush around the lake near my home, witnessing the slow shedding of a paper bark tree. How deeply her shedding spoke to me. How often I have been vulnerable, my protective layers shed, sometimes organically, emergent vulnerability, other times by storms of seemingly uninvited change. How often I witness and help hold a participant’s vulnerability as they open into deeper layers of themselves, gently and willingly taking off their outer layers. How often I witness and help hold a participant’s vulnerability as forced by life’s events, their protective layers are torn leaving them exposed. A tree without bark. So much is held in bark, so much can cause shedding, the tree exposed to the elements as new layers are grown. One day, a very large piece of bark shed from the tree nearby ‘my’ lake. In wonder at how this layer had shed in one piece and lay intact, I asked the tree if I could take her bark home with me. Thanking her, I took the piece. During the last four years many participants have learned from this tree’s generosity as they worked with her in artmaking, and so this once large piece of bark is now smaller as it comes to rest in Panel 2. In Vulnerability, I invite you to locate yourself in this tree’s shedding. Perhaps it isn’t an invitation, rather a recognition that we are each vulnerable, and each implicated in each other’s vulnerability. We are always implicated in the social/political/ cultural discourses that create the conditions for dramatic shedding – think for a moment on the vulnerability of the child in the refugee camp on Naru. What bark do they have left? What are y/our responsibilities in protecting such vulnerability, in movements towards their growing new bark?