from the editor's desk
A Sorrowful Act: Drew Pettifer’s LWAG exhibition with poetry from Amy Lin
‘A Sorrowful Act: the wreck of the Zeewijk’ is a solo exhibition by artist and academic Drew Pettifer, running 29th of August to 5th of December at Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, curated by Ted Snell AM.
The exhibition examines the 1727 sodomy trial that followed the shipwreck of the Zeewijk off the coast of Western Australian in the Albrolhos—arguably the first recorded moment in European queer history in Australia. The trial resulted in the sentencing of two young ship’s mates to death by marooning on separate nearby islands.
This feature combines images from the exhibition with an ekphrastic response to the work from Amy Lin, and was published in Westerly 65.2. It meets with writing from Scott-Patrick Mitchell offering a response to Brent Harrison’s ‘HERE&NOW2020: Perfectly Queer’, which you can find here!
Wreck of the Zeewijk
Amy Lin
X marks the spot
on the leather clasps
of the books’ spines.
Stitched and threaded
into vertebrae, making
bodies of these objects,
objects of these bodies.
Umber-edged pages
billow like the sea’s surface.
Who did not refrain to commit
in godforsaken way
the gruesome sin of
Sodom and Gomorrah.
Faded script burns
a fuse between the fingers,
the law thrown at them
like language.
In potential paradise
sky and cirrus mocks
a celestial answer to
saltbush and mangrove.
There is a tide that is
ever arriving, never announced,
ever reaching towards
flesh that has filtered through
time’s hourglass
to become synonymous
with sand and shale.
And on separate islands
two shipwrecks of bone
remain stretched out,
witnessed only by gull and scrub,
buried only partly
by the whims of the Abrolhos wind.
Glass onions, 1727
Amy Lin
These onion bottles
are cracked and crumbled
around the rim.
Tilt flat-bottomed glass
and wine falls from the
shaft to the globe.
You’ll cut your lip
to drink from their depths,
taste the merlot that’s
matured for centuries.
It still hints of the same
full-bodied finish.
The bottles lie on their sides
on the Zeewijk
so that the corks are soaked,
and the liquids
unoxidised by sea air.
They do not shatter
in straight lines
but in shapely shards.
Flutes sever in two, and an
indifferent Indian Ocean
is stained with the contents
of the blood-red bulbs.
A wave curves its mouth
and dashes saltwater froth,
washing ashore a broken vial,
no message writ within.
But still it glistens, glints,
the breeze caressing its
drowsy cannon
with a low hum,
lacing through it
in the slow smoking of
an island’s powder.
Amy Lin is a Perth-based writer who has published poems, essays, interviews and reviews in Westerly, Cordite, Australian Book Review, LA Review of Books and other places. Her PhD research focused on the poetry of Francis Webb, Bruce Beaver and Michael Dransfield.
Drew Pettifer is an artist and academic and currently Program Manager of the Bachelor of Arts (Fine Art) (Honours) Program at RMIT University. Drew’s art practice explores themes of intimacy, gender, sexuality, power, the archive and social politics using photography, video, installation and performance.
[…] these exhibitions, Westerly has also published both online and in issue 65.2 a feature of work from Amy Lin and Scott-Patrick Mitchell offering an ekphrastic response to the two exhibitions, compiled with […]