Journeying Home

When James Cook dropped anchor in 1777 and came ashore at Adventure Bay, Van Diemen's Land, he observed many hollowed-out tree trunks. So large and effective were these hollows in keeping out the elements, they were, he guessed, human shelters. The black lining provided evidence of deliberate renovations – house extensions done with fire. Some early British settlers similarly used trees as temporary homes. I suspect that anyone prepared to sit with Richard Wastell’s Good place to rest along the river will not be surprised by this. To be present to With shells and sheoaks is not just to see images of Wastell’s much loved island home, but to be invited in.

Although the confrontation present in previous work is less evident – there are no fire-bombed forestry coupes - the challenge this exhibition poses to contemporary culture is even more profound. Everyone is welcome to come inside the Wastell hollow, but not everything. There is not the room for our clutter – by which I mean not only possessions but also our delusions of mastery and expertise. To enter this tree is to be emptied, to take off our shoes and let our feet wallow in soil and ash.

These extraordinary paintings are a link to denied memory. They decorate a sacred inner room called home. Yet this room is so crusted over with scars and shouting and calamity that to stare into that cavernous tree hole is also to want to weep. Will we let go of the false gods of our age? Dare we truly belong?

The relationship offered to us is, though, never jealous. This is an artist who knows we were born to move (even if a respectful bow is called for before taking the first step away). Is it the camp fires in the distance which call us on?

Or perhaps we shall go to the beach, the traditional Australian site of playing, sharing and getting a feed. There is much nonsense talked about the history of fishing in Tasmania. About 4000 years ago Aboriginal people seemed to have stopped eating scale fish. I suspect this was not regression, but progression, a celebration of the natural bounty consequent to climate change, when there was no longer any need to go to so much trouble to obtain sufficient to eat. More certainly, this is the logic that led to the British largely giving up eating fish in early Van Diemen's Land. Except for the upper class whose identity and status depended on clinging to everything from England, most Britons preferred, like the Aborigines, the seafood which could be easily obtained –shellfish. So plentiful were abalone and mussels that for both cultural groups they largely remained outside the exchange system but at the heart of hospitality. Wastell captures this sense of abundance, of gift, of a shared food eaten from the generosity of the earth and the beauty created as a result. Even the packaging proved to be glorious.

There is such vulnerability and mystery enclosed in the stunning ‘empty’ shells of Abalone. So easily crushed, yet their transcendent spirals calm our puny pretensions to power. Oh, the courage of the one who faces us! I so envy those who will live every day with her openness (although perhaps Richard is reminding us that ultimately we all have this privilege). The mussel shell is individually less striking - like its meat, a plainer pie - but piled together it too is transformed. One shell may be a little thing, but hundreds become a mountain of wonder. Pyramids of the sea.

Few could look at these shell paintings and not think of Tasmanian Aboriginal middens. But in Wastell’s art there is no sense of appropriation – these are not Aboriginal middens. I could sit by the river for hours invokes the memory of hundreds of generations of beach picnics, but they are shell piles beyond time. Richard accepts full responsibility for his own journey, but does so with transforming respect. Meal over, there remains time for a bush-walk! The she-oaks pulsate life and growth, a beat beyond the human heart. And, oh, what a butterfly! My spirit soars with its joy and its grandeur. Bring the children! Dare we join in a playful chase or even risk a ride!

With Shells and Sheoaks is an invitation to come on a soul-journey to Wastell country, but the art is never parochial. While the artist is so deeply earthed in the soil of his home land that love resonates from the canvas, to believe that this diminishes Richard Wastell’s broader significance is to be seduced by some of the silliest advertising of our age. It might upset those who construct their identity by being at the‘centre’, but it is nevertheless true that there is no contradiction between celebrating the distinctively local and expressing what is most universal. Indeed, traditional wisdom would suggest that there is no other way. How easily we forget that all true journeys begin from (and occur) somewhere.

Richard Wastell’s paintings pose the choice faced by all. We can rush on in madness until our fantasies collapse around us, or we can cease our striving long enough to remember the ancient paths. Dare we again lie down in a tree?

James Boyce, July 2008
James Boyce is the author of Van Diemens Land published by Black Inc. 2008

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