The Tale of Diamonds [Telling Tales]

The Tale of Diamonds [Telling Tales]

'The Tale of Diamonds' (2024) is an original larger-than-life custom-made diamond painting, completed in collaboration with my mother who had been diagnosed with advanced cancer. Each diamond drill was placed individually by hand, like a contemporary cross stitch infused with symbolic and personal storytelling. The subject matter is reminiscent of a dark fairy tale; with fiction, alongside the diamond art process, serving as a powerful mechanism in engaging with embodied trauma and personal exchanges of caring amidst the broader cancer management setting.

This work was shown in 'Telling Tales', a two-part postgraduate and staff touring exhibition. Part A: Art as Personal Narrative, situated at A block Gallery, UniSQ explores the important role that person-centred art stories play in terms of our well-being. Part B: The Narratives of Care and Caregiving in Art was exhibited at St Andrew’s Hospital, Toowoomba and further explores wellbeing via notions of care and caregiving through personal and/or public narratives. The exhibition incorporates a creative research approach and its concerns for how meanings and understandings surrounding wellbeing can make visible the caregiver and processes of caregiving across creative disciplines and contexts. Thematically, the exhibition seeks to reveal the many complexities and tensions that can be associated with the role of the caregiver and highlight possibilities for unexplored and perhaps even unconventional ideas in its broad approach to caregiving.