"From a very young age, there were always problems in our neighbourhood - squabbles, fights, breaking windows, having stuff stolen from our home. I used to get picked on a lot as well by neighbour kids, bashed or whatever. I'd have to go to school with people that lived in my street that I knew had broken into my home, and it was just a crap dynamic, yeah.
So, my mum married a man who was much younger than her and he had undergone a lot of like, bashings, and stuff. She was already quite damaged by the time she'd had a few kids because of that marriage, yeah, and she was very unwell. So, from a very young age, I pretty much had to try to cook and clean right from about seven or eight years old. It was just like she constantly had something wrong with her. But from my understanding now, my Mum has mental health issues that she’d never really addressed. After prison I feel that I’m still at a crossroads in my life, I still have to figure out what life is going to be like on the outside, having financial stability, paying my bills, learning how to live in the world again."
Self Portraits
I'm Always Aboriginal
I am here
I am present and yet distant
At the moment I am fighting
A story with many chapters
verses that unfold.
A never-ending whirlwind
a story never told.
"I'm Aboriginal, so this one's pretty easy. Yeah, I'm obviously quite white, and that in itself, in custody, as well as life, was a struggle. Being fair skinned and Aboriginal in life, you might be accepted and you might not be. But I'm always Aboriginal, regardless of my pale skin, and the struggle inside, like I said, to sort of be equal and accepted by the girls that are darker."
More Self Portraits
I Love Flowers and I Love to Sing
“I love flowers and I sing; the words in music are my expression, and music has saved my life. Without music, I probably wouldn't have survived. And even in jail, music's always there. They can never take music from you; it's always inside of you.
Music's always in my head, even if I was in a safe cell, I had lyrics and music in my head. Nobody can take that away from me. Control is a big thing in jail, they always have control of you, so to survive you have to take back small wins.
The tears are there because I have had a hard life, and I cry usually alone by myself. I'm by myself, but I'm pretty much happy. I'm here, I survived. The quotation marks are there because I am a contradiction. I'm a lot of things. I'm a rape survivor, I'm a mother, I'm an ex-inmate, I'm, like: ‘I am a statement.’”
I Learnt to Keep My Mouth Closed
“My mouth is closed because at a certain point in my life, I just learned to keep my mouth shut, and I suppose in jail that followed on too, you had to sort of toe the line a lot of the time, and keep your mouth shut or you'd be punished. There are no eyes because I try to love everyone unconditionally with the true meaning of unconditionally.
I don't see what everyone else sees. I just see love for anyone and everyone. There’s just a hole for my heart because I was told about my crime, that I was a heartless, that I'm just some evil, heartless bitch, which I wasn't, which I'm not.
The cross represents how I was raised by a Catholic Christian parent, but now there is no religion for me, because I asked for God to help, but there was no help.”
I'm Taurus in a Dry Cell
“Those are my Taurus’s and prison. That's probably a depiction, like of myself being in the bars. But because there's multiple Taurus heads, that was probably about my mental health, when I was in a safe cell, in a dry cell, where I was losing it a bit, and there was many ‘me’s’.
Like there was: upset ‘me’, angry ‘me’, being watched ‘me’, being watched in a safe cell ‘me’, and being watched for my own safety ‘me’. And all of that because I had mental health conditions that weren't helped and weren't fixed.”
My Energy
My Energy at the Time
“That was my mood at that moment. Like I was up and down, all, um, up and down, angry, maybe sharp lines are like anger to me, yeah, and I was a little bit, yeah, angry and chaotic. And, yeah, up and down.”
I Like to be Peaceful Now
“That’s my peace sign. I was just peaceful at that point, and I like to be peaceful now. I don't like to use violence now. I try so hard to be a peaceful person now, and that's what is in the greens and blues, they’re are my favourite colours.
A lot of people would say, oh, blue represents police officers, and green is for inmates. But regardless, to me, I've always liked blues and greens, despite having to wear green for nine years. It's nothing, and blue is blue, and blue is calm and peaceful.”
My Energy is Up and Down
“That's my energy. Daily, I go up, yeah, I go down. Because I've got constant pain, I kind of fizzle out. I've got damage to my spine and lower back due to bashings when I was younger.”
The Layers of My Life
Layers of my Life from Childhood
“That's my journey from childhood. It's the one where we were little to when we were older, our life. The green bars are prison where you wear green. So, I represented myself behind the bars without using grey or black or brown as the bars. The black down the bottom is my childhood Yeah, it was pretty crap, yucky and crap. The green bits there are probably like the bits with my dad and our dogs, or the good times with my sister hanging out with me, before she was in girls’ homes. So that's why it's a little bit green, but mostly black. The red and brown are for anger, and all the bashings and sexual assaults, that weren’t dealt with or followed up on, or me even admitting them, I was very confused and messed up. Then there’s the blue and clouds and sun, and that’s after prison because after prison everything's been pretty okay. It’s not great don't get me wrong it's been really bad, hard, but it's still free. I can still see the sky every day. If I want to look at it out the window, around my door, I'm still free to see the sky whenever I like.”
My Journey
I'm at a Crossroads
“This was meant to be a crossroads, on a path. The bars are the crossroads that are meant to lead out. The cross on the crossroads is when I went to jail, but really the crossroads continue out of jail when I had to start a life again after nine years inside. So, I’m still on a crossroads in my life, and it kind of ended, but it didn't end because I still had nothing, like I left jail and I’m still on a crossroads, really, because I had to go and live in boarding homes.
I had many things ahead of me, though I have no addiction now. I had to start a lot of counselling and work on myself. So, my life was still at a crossroads when I left prison, because I still had to figure out what life was going to be like on the outside. I had to find counselling, even find a permanent place to live, have financial stability, pay my bills, learn how to live in the world again.”
My Experience of the Criminal Legal System
My Experience of the Criminal Legal System
“In the middle is a cell door and a representation of an inmate, because the question mark is the green. I might go one further with that and say each inmate is a question mark, because you never know who they are, or what they’re going to be like the next day to you. It was a very stressful environment where you walked on egg shells, because they could be nasty one minute and nice the next.
The corner where the blue and white that looks like a checkerboard, represents the officers, and the number you’re always a number, you’re never a person. The La luna in the corner represents the night sky through my cell window, and the daylight, especially doing a lot of segregation time, like I did.”