During the lockdowns of 2020–2021, after my children had finally fallen asleep, I would move through the living room to tidy up. Each night the carpet held treasures: paper scraps, half-finished crafts, little sculptures, leaves tracked in from outside. One night, overwhelmed by the abundance of life that had passed through the room, I photographed everything before putting it away. I only knew they deserved to be kept.
I had long felt a quiet shame about the mess. That night I saw that providing space for this was not a failure. It was a form of care.
In 2022, supported by a grant from the City of Melbourne, I wove these fragments together with the daily log I kept on a blog during the lockdowns. The many voices of our daily survival coexisted, and became the artist book Being Keepers: Lockdown.
