Scrolling through Time

Time. It’s’ unchanging inevitability as we journey through. Like a river, we cannot change its’ flow. Yet our era is characterised by impatience – a desire to push the river – evidenced everywhere in our attitudes and actions.

Spirituality does not belong here. Yet many of us perceive spirituality as something we seek to incorporate into our lives. Finding peace and serenity is something to contain us on the journey. It is not found in a hurry.

Japanese packaging and its’ meaning in Japanese culture absorbed me as I read ‘How to Wrap 5 more Eggs’ by Hideyuki Oka.

I paraphrase : ‘Traditional packaging infers that our inner, spiritual satisfaction cannot be wrested from material abundance. The modern system of material abundance which makes our daily lives easy has caused an irrevocable loss.

Japanese packaging manifests a love of spiritual things, a love that people in the modern world must make haste to reclaim unless it is to vanish forever’.

Packages concealed a gift – yet the packaging was often more valuable or relevant than the gift contained therein. The thought and effort involved in the package honoured the spirit of the person receiving it.

Over time this spiritual pursuit has faded. We are too impatient to take the time required by the thought and effort required.

Another tradition that has faded is that of ‘scrolls’. Printing presses have rendered them outdated. But the beauty of scrolls wherein hand written messages are concealed, rolled up and unseen, hold a demure secrecy. Scrolls, in my mind embody their own spirituality.

And so in this body of work packaging and scrolls are seen as timeless containers of a spirit worthy of consideration. Containment, again, is at the centre.

Visual vocabulary comprises hand felted lace, handmade paper, leaf printed silk organza – in the motif of the gum leaf resides my own spiritual connection with Australia. Materials take days to create, inferring and respecting the time these customs absorb.