Apples
This year my partner made the move from living in inner city Melbourne to living on a property outside of Trentham, Victoria. For me, this has meant living part time in my suburb of Brunswick and part time on the property in Trentham. The change has been a positive one but not without its challenges. There are chickens to feed, fires to stoke and apples to collect! These new rituals although enjoyable have caused me some anxiety with how much of my time they consume.
Reflecting on the time spent collecting fallen apples, I have realised that although time consuming I value the process and the fruit that is in such abundance in this time right now, soon the last apple will have fallen and the daily ritual will end. This work is an a reflection on value, archiving and preserving value.
Considering the value I place on the apples and the daily ritual of collecting them, I wanted to perform a gesture that captured that value.
By laying them out in a grid each individual apple is given space and can be seen, as opposed to being gathered in a bag.
Physically reflecting the gridded planting structure of the crops around them, they are one square in a patchwork of rural stories.
Archiving Apples
I decided to include the apples that had started to rot to emphasise that even the ones that I don't consume hold value. They feed the insects and birds and return to the soil to enrich the next years crop.
Preserving, a form of archiving. To make the fruit last, we have been stewing, pickling dehydrating and pressing.
Preserving Apples
