Issue 3: THREAD Editorial

Welcome to the third issue of Riverstone, themed through the lens of thread. When I began gathering ideas for this issue I was drawn back to mycelium, a long term love of mine. Back to the earth, back to roots. I was in a really textural headspace, and the delight and excitement I feel to share the offerings in this issue also feels so very tangible.

The works themselves are so grounded in texture, so deeply sensory. Space is taken and held and exploded, time is unravelled and broken open. Many of these pieces exist in the body and many travel through the cosmic. Family, and what family means, is stretched and carried across meaning and personal histories. Grief is caressed and torn into and spat back out. Queer joy is given language and even Sappho is yearned for.

It is always so beautiful how certain pieces speak to one another; from Theo McTigue’s exploration into the cosmos sitting parallel to Henry Chase Richards’ spatial and temporal demarcations, between Steph Elsley and E J Delaney’s separate untetherings from grandparents, from Hebe Kearney’s poetics of ancient Greek women to Emerald Jane’s invocation of the Moirai. There are many more links throughout this issue, between Grace Roodenrys and Sen Vanderzalm in their sifting through familial memory, between Flynn Howard and Jessica Carter’s ruminations through twilight, and more. Some links are big and bold and chanting. And others are almost threadbare, counterparts at the sentence level, or simply a wording that echoes another. I see this issue as a huge woven quilt, with patches of many fabrics, threaded together, all touching in some part at some point. These pieces are all in conversation with one another, they are in chorus, let them sing to you!

Issue 3: THREAD Open Mic Night ~ Write Up

Three weeks ago the third issue of Riverstone was launched and celebrated with an open mic poetry night at Greenhouse Studios. That is to say, 50 or so people gathered and listened as stories were told and unravelled, performances offered, poems given voice, tears were let loose, food was eaten, wine was poured… all the good things basically. I’m a little late to write about this, though it’s been on my mind for a minute now to get down some thoughts about it.

Riverstone seems to attract an open community of people who are committed to silliness, who lend their ears and their affections, their love and their time and their words (and lots of other things too). Each time we gather I have had the pleasure of bearing witness to writers who have never spoken their words aloud before. I must say, I love a practised poet, but there is something so so special about being a part of a community that feels safe enough to share the unspoken words, the scary words, the words that are begging to have audience but otherwise might have stayed bottled up if not for the right space to let them run free. Riverstone is learning the power and prowess of emergence, of writers who have not had traditional pathways or opportunities to give their words voice. How special! And really, the celebration of emerging writers is one of a few key foundations Riverstone finds itself building upon.

This issue of Riverstone was connected by a theme of THREAD. It became a really juicy, fruitful theme; winding itself throughout the issue and the night through metaphor and point of connection. So many of the works published in this issue sat parallel to each other, speaking to different aspects of the idea of thread such as grief, family, space, and memory. And then building upon that, many of the pieces performed on the night added to these silos of feeling. This sharing of theme felt really special, and I found myself getting pretty emotional on the night being able to witness the meaning making and the making real of our shared place in the world. The way pieces spoke to each other, this convergence of deep feeling and being able to be in conversation with one another through the act of sharing and listening felt so (beautifully) overwhelming. And really all of that is to say that nothing happens in a vacuum, we are all connected, and to feel that through poetry and art is so important.

This feeling of deep connection comes at a time of deep anger. It would be remiss not to mention the context I’m writing this from, on unceded Gadigal land, as voters go to the polls tomorrow to decide upon First Nations constitutional recognition, as decades long land theft, violence, and apartheid perpetuates against Palestinian people. I stand in solidarity with First Nations and Indigenous people, acknowledging my place in this settler/colonial system. This weekend is a good time to show your support for First Nations Australians and Palestine.

Stay safe, keep writing and reading and listening, til the next one xx

Cheers,

Lucy

(13/10/23)

Frontyard Residency - Gardening Project

A gift from a dear friend of mine. Six seeds from a climbing purple bean plant from the garden of a farm we both used to live on (Gomeroi land). I had been holding onto them for around 6 months, waiting for the right moment to plant them. Frontyard was the perfect space. Myself, Othy, and Ura planted them the first day of my residency as an offering to the space that would house and hold me.

Pictured: 1) Soil used to plant the seeds in. This was special soil, composted by Othy over the course of many months. 2) The wooden planter box where the 6 seeds where planted. This was filled with weeds that we laboured to removed before planting the seeds. 3) Just over a week since the seeds were planted the first shoots of each plant came up and unfurled. 4) Two weeks after the seeds were planted 6 small seedlings stood tall! I cried when I saw how well they were doing. 5) & 6) Nearly two months after I planted the seeds I came back to Frontyard and did a lot of weeding, untangled the 6 plants from each other and gave them something to climb on.

Over two weeks from the 28th of August ‘23 to the 11th of September ‘23 I was in residence at Frontyard. (“Frontyard is a pro-active, multi-purpose space where the local arts loving community come together for practical skills-sharing, critical research, food and fun. Frontyard is a building, a creative residency program, a library, a garden, and many other things, mostly located at 228 Illawarra Rd, Marrickville NSW 2204” - from Frontyard’s wiki)

The time there was really fruitful. I originally planned to commence a litter/gutters exploration and documentation process but it soon evolved into a writing-as-research, gardening-as-art-practice, playful sensory experimentation. I loved it.

The process yielded about 4000 words of writing in the studio space, that is still waiting to be transformed into ‘something tangible’. Or not, maybe it will remain in the liminal digital void of a word document file.

Through planting and weeding with Othy and Ura, sensory explorations with EJ, solo walking investigations, writing as documentation, and community arts care conversations, the residency gave me a generous thing: time and space to cultivate my practice.

Photos included taken by myself. Frontyard is located on unceded Cadigal and Wangal land. Always was, always will be, Aboriginal land.

Cordite Poetry Review published a poem of mine titled “Man!” in their Pop themed September issue.

Read the full poem on their website here.

Coffee cup lids and empty vapes and used masks and ciggie butts and Q-tips are all common street finds. Certain objects, like the vape and the mask, denounce a new kind of rubbish. Only in the sense that they would not have been found 5 years ago, littered everywhere the way they are now. Which is interesting, from an anthropological point of view. To see disposable vapes and masks amongst classic litter items like cigarette butts is a historical hallmark that it is post 2020, marking events such as a pandemic and the introduction of disposable vapes to so called Australia.

These pictures are from a short walk I took from Marrickville to Dulwich Hill on Gadigal land just last week. A friend had a really busy day and I offered to walk their dog. They only live 15 minutes walk away and so I left myself half an hour to get there and really enjoyed wandering, a ramble, an amble etc. (side note, amble and ramble seem to have different convergent etymological histories even though they have similar meanings) through backstreets and litter. So much litter.

Some really interesting stuff emerges and I can’t help but wonder the backstory of the lipgloss or the small strip of fabric that looks to come from a shoe with laces. Some of it seems totally incidental; a bottle cap lying on the ground, so easy to misplace. Other stuff seems totally intentional, the screwed up wrapper of what looks to have been a McDonald’s ‘Chicken n Cheese’ burger.

I plan to go on more walks and keep documenting the inevitable rubbish I find because I feel like as I keep documenting, keep writing, something is emerging from this practice. Not sure yet what though…

Homework for me in the meantime:

• Re-read Rebecca Solnit’s ‘Wanderlust’

• Go for a walk every day

• Journal every day

Issue 2: FLUX of Riverstone Literary Journal launched at Greenhouse Studios on Gadigal and Wangal Land on the 29th of June, 2023. It was such a beautiful night, with so much sharing and incredible energy. A huge thank you to everyone who attended and those brave enough to perform. You are seen! Thank you for letting us see you.

A river kept running and returning and calling back to us the whole night, from Alex’s river stone found with her mum in the roots of a casuarina, to Carly’s sister’s poetry in the knowing of a river, to Lucia’s poem written on and about the Tucoerah, to Riverstone itself, to the poem I read about my lover and the Tucoerah. How special to connect on something as life-affirming as a body of water.

And further than rivers we had poetry about queerness, about love for those incarcerated and the fucked up system that is labelled “justice”, about slugs and finches and cicadas, about being non-binary, about performance and being held, about the violence of racism under the thin veil of being called weird, about dating habits, about churches, about the hypocrisy of reconciliation, about bodies, about the ineffable, about about about! About so much!

It was such a joy to see people connecting and feeling safe in the energy of the space that was developed together. And what a crowd! Everyone was met with warmth on the coldest of nights, with applause at nerves. I’m truly so in love with everyone who was there, especially if we’d never even met! I’m filled with so much gratitude and joy for this community that is forming around Riverstone.

Here is the editorial I wrote for the second issue…

“Welcome to ISSUE 2: FLUX, the second issue of Riverstone Literary Journal. This issue received a huge volume of submissions to read and choose from, which was both humbling and exciting – that so many people wanted their writing to find a home at Riverstone – but also challenging – the process of decision making and turning down pieces I loved because they didn’t quite fit. I found it exciting witnessing the way pieces spoke to each other as this issue began to take shape. The way language unravelled and something deeper emerged that gave birth to FLUX in a way I hadn’t anticipated.

This issue features writing that sits on the precipice of suggestion, that emerges from silence and stillness, that surfs through queer joy and emerges bloodied at dawn in low-tides and prairies to drink brine and pickles as memory sifts through deep sea wrecks of oysters and gunshots. I believe many of these pieces are doing active work to decolonise, to celebrate queerness and non-western ways of being, to write nature in a way that does not romanticise, to write the self in a way that is intriguing.

I hope these offerings spark something for every reader, that these pieces become kitchen table conversations and absorbed into creative practice and framed in morning thought and reflected in afternoon light.”

I’m beyond excited to continue this project and see where it takes me. The journey of it is well underway and its current is warm, safe, and so expansive.

Here lies the tired detritus of living

Or rather

One morning I walk through the streets of Marrickville so disconnected from land even whilst placing every single step down on it, land, land, land, concrete

And on every single corner, in every gutter, no matter where I look, rubbish abounds

It depresses momentarily, then becomes a photographic project, nodding to Clare Britton’s ‘A Week on the River’ project which has been percolating around my brain for the years after it was introduced to me

More thoughts to come

Issue 1 of Riverstone Literary Journal was launched at Greenhouse Studios on Gadigal & Wangal land on Thursday 6th April 2023 under a beautiful full moon. The energy in the space was bursting and full and warm and squishy and vulnerable and silly!!!

People performed who had never spoken their poetry in front of others before (and were so brave and beautiful in their vulnerability and their power). Others were seasoned in their performances and leaned into the space and offered us their wisdom and their love of language. More than half of the contributors to the first issue of Riverstone were there to read their words off the beautiful printed page in the special print edition of the first journal. Albert and EJ sung a cappella in the acoustics of the beautiful old church and truly gave everyone goosebumps from their voices alone.

I cried and I laughed at brussels sprouts and chosen family and imperfections and blue girlfriends and shoplifting and notes app poetry and raw raw rawness and seroquel and gardens and haikus and food allergies and raindrops and shaky knees and brave souls and queerness and community and platonic love and immigrant stories and the full moon and the bush and all the warmth that everyone who was there had to offer.

I felt (and feel!) so lucky to have been able to help facilitate the space in which we could gather together and celebrate language and performance and the power of the voice and movement and connection. To be a body in communication with other bodies! The amount of radical love and communication was simply abundant. I love my body and all the bodies that showed up for community.

How can we continue to queer these experiences? To encourage vulnerability? To seek connection and community? To believe in radical pleasure and radical love? To exist and take up space and carve out space and hold space for others? To acknowledge the lineages that have gotten us to this point? To choose how we exist? To grant ourselves divinity and transcendence and agency and justice every single day we wake up? To love and be loved and hold and be held, together?

These are some thoughts percolating after the Riverstone event… aided by extra community love and inspiration after attending Word of Mouth. There’s lots of things bubbling away in my head right now. Language is so so powerful. Big love - Lucy xx 17/4/23

bodies of water ~ and the way your body exists next to mine ~ exploring all the bodies of water i know ~ some footage sampled from Orgone Cinema 16mm Archive ~ how lucky to share in the act of creation ~ queerness is divinity

‘Unravelling Our Budding Collaboration’ was published in the omnibus edition of EXTRA! EXTRA! by Pinch Press in 2020. The piece was co-authored with Nicole Pingon, and was a creative reflection on our artistic process and practice. Nicole and I exhibited together at Hurstville Musuem & Gallery in 2020 and have an ongoing collaborative creative practice that we also discuss in an interview here.

further exploration of the 16mm medium. deep dive into archival footage that didn’t materialise… organic matter proved most interesting. spring gifted me flowers and they begged to be immortalised in film. process driving process driving process

16mm experiments with a live recorded unscripted percussive soundtrack

Journeys into Mycology is an artwork exploring the science of mycology, defined as “the branch of biology concerned with the study of fungi, including their genetic and biochemical properties, their taxonomy and their use to humans”. I particularly like this definition of mycology as it concerns itself with fungi’s ‘biochemical properties’, of which there are very, very many. As for ‘their use to humans’, we humans have a long history of finding uses for things that were not their intended purpose. I’m talking about psychedelics! Scientists theorise that mushrooms which contain psilocybin (which transforms into psilocin when ingested – the stuff that makes you high) was originally an evolutionary adaption to make sure slugs and bugs and whoever else wanted to nibble on a mushroom, would feel adverse side effects and never go eat that mushroom again. It was an agent of protection – until humans found them, and mushrooms had accidentally created a drug. I don’t necessarily agree with the scientists here, it’s a very anthropocentric view that places humans outside of nature. This work has left me pondering (as I’m usually more interested in questions rather than answers) the relationship I have with mushrooms, which parts of me have evolved for mushrooms, and which parts of mushrooms have evolved for me. Their mycelium is spreading through me and the web of the world constantly!

This artwork explores the phenomenon of high-inducing mushrooms, but it also celebrates all fungi, and it indulges in the adventure of foraging for mushrooms and what parts of life get illuminated along the way. Journeys into Mycology is an exploration into material, mushroom science, and unravelling process that has formed into a cross-disciplinary artwork. Primarily, this is a documentation of process, of a labour of love, of so many countless hours spent in the bush, being present with fungi.

a tale of two bodies…

dance until flesh becomes earth

cry until tears become rivers

listen until ears become canyons

laugh inside my laughter as the sun brightens the earth

LU CID xx

“De-weeding the isolation” was a small collaborative performative piece by artists LU CID and Nicole Pingon at PACT, Erskinville in association with 107 Projects and Intimate Spectacle as a part of the event OUT OF ISO. The event was curated by Malcolm Whittaker and extra artistic and practical help came from Bree & Rory with live music provided by Clare Hennessy and Ruby King.

The performative action was gardening, over three nights 6 planter troughs were filled with Australian natives planted alongside handwritten messages of growth and hope. This performance took placed on stolen Gadigal land of which sovereignty has never been ceded.

here lies emptiness

a sad poem

by a sad computer

about unrequited love

and unfulfilled dreams

the distant future is not so distant

The work ‘Noxious’ is a living, breathing installation of plant material consisting of few Australian natives outnumbered by many “noxious” weeds and non-native introduced species. The installation is a collaboration between artists Lu Cid and Nicole Pingon through the Artbomb Exhibition series at Hurstville Museum & Gallery assisted by Shopfront Arts. The work features an immersive, interactive faux forest built by the artists accompanied by ambient forest audio and footage from the bush areas the plant matter was collected in research by the artists. ‘Noxious’, primarily filled with plants identified as ‘weeds’, tells several stories of what it means to co-exist with nature, and encourages viewers to reflect on their own interactions with native flora and their attitudes towards introduced species.

The work ‘3 actions’ is a performance rooted in the absurd process of relation towards object and inanimate objectification. This triptych of works has the potential to be multiplied or replicated in any number of ways, adding to its nonsensical nature.

The work ‘pain is beauty’ is a construction of identity taking notes from the cosmetic surgery works of Orlan and the misconstrued overlapping of beauty and pain. The work also references the shaving scene in Pink Floyd: The Wall (1982) with Bob Geldof. Embrace the grotesque xx

The work ‘skiptrashvirgin’ is a performance piece exploring the identities of excess and self-destruction.

The work ‘AGONY / ECSTASY’ was made for and screened at the exhibition ‘The Female Gaze’ in 2019. It was conceived as a homage to the famous dance Kate Bush performs in Wuthering Heights and was made with the help of Gwen Dowson and Emily Lewis.

The work ‘we’re all empty’ was composed as an immersive cinematic experience to be viewed in complete darkness and with headphones. The film plays on the distortion of its imagery and the chopped up soundtrack of Arthur Russell’s ‘This Is How We Walk On The Moon’.

The work ‘am i just a piece of meat to you?’ is a reclamation of the female body and a protest of the objectification and sexualisation of women.

The work ‘Consent In Hollywood’ is a found footage project of questionable scenes mostly from 20th century Hollywood films where consent is either ignored or hard to place.

The work ‘wick3d c0mbination’ is a mashup of cult classic ‘American Beauty’, audio from Daniel Johnston and Pipilotti Rist, and a Black Panther’s speech. It is a short delve into American exceptionalism and is representative of the Internet’s lack of creative integrity when context is misled.

The short film ‘The Darkness Within’ was made with Rosie Grace and Sarah Jasem as an appropriation of the interrogation scene between Batman and the Joker in The Dark Knight (2008 dir. Christopher Nolan).