This artwork is made up of 8 full body portraits that are then stretched and a motion blur is added to turn each person into a colourful line. Michelle’s family is on the left and Ben’s family is on the right. L-R Willow, Xavier, Phil, Michelle, Ben, Deanne, Mitchell & Max. 

As friends for 30 years, they’ve always been doing their own things: working on their careers, nurturing their own friendships and travelling the world. Now they’re raising their own families but although their paths may be completely different, they travel in parallel lines with each other and they will be richer for the experience. 

Ben, Michelle and a couple of other students would meet in the school playground during lunch breaks to bunker down in a concrete tunnel and play cards. They thought they were pretty cool and different to the other kids. The only game they knew was Black Jack, or “21” as they called it back then. 

Having kids is like 🤯 and this artwork represents that shock to the system that being a new parent brings. It’s the mind fog that comes from sleep depravation and caring for these tiny cute people. Some people say it gets better, others say it gets worse. Either way, it’s all pretty hazy. 

The first few years of parenthood were a blur. Stepping into this new stage of sleep deprivation and caring for little babies created an initial hazy cocoon. Michelle began her haze in 2013 after having Xavier and then 2015 with Willow. Ben’s haze began in 2019 when Mitchell came along and 2020 when Max appeared into the world. Sleep has never been the same since…

It began with text based chatting, but for Ben, he also spent large amounts of time playing text based multi user games. It was a flurry of colourful text moving endlessly on the screen for hours each day. The only good thing was that he learnt to type accurately and with great speed and this helped him achieve many goals later in life. 

In 1996 a group of friends were part of a BBS (Bulletin Board Service) called INGA (Interactive Network Games Adelaide). It’s a rudimentary form of internet that existed before the internet was known as The Internet. Michelle and Ben were early internet adopters before the internet went main-stream, and although they were teased by others at school for being nerdy and having “internet friends”, they didn’t care. They would meet up in real life at parties and basketball games when they weren’t on their computers engaging in text based chats and games. 

Ben was never late for happy hour at the Crown and Anchor on a Friday night. $20 would get 4 pints of Coopers Pale Ale, which was a great start to the night. 

Those late teens and early 20s days were full of partying and testing our limits. Ben had blue hair and Michelle couldn’t work out if she was some sort of cyber girl or gothic.

This artwork is inspired by a photograph Ben took at Womad in 2009 of a stand with parasols on it. It was one of the more memorable images he had taken there and the first thing that comes to mind when the word “Festive” is mentioned. 

In their mid to late 20s, there was a flurry of festivals and art exhibitions that inspired creativity, learning, friendships, wine, food, conversations and good times.