Eighteen years later, they got back up on stage. A man next to me in the audience showed me an old photo he kept on his phone of the band, from way back. He said he used to go to all of their gigs around Perth. He was their biggest fan. He wore a huge grin.

I hadn’t known Flanders back then–I was flitting off around the world, oblivious to the indie pop scene in Freo. To me the guy about to start singing and playing lead guitar was just Luke, the dad of one of my girls’ friends.

The band played for one glorious hour. Many people in the crowd knew the words. They sang and danced, soaking up the fleeting gift. I wanted to catch up with the man in the audience after the gig. Ask him whether the band lived up to his memories. I couldn’t see him. But it didn’t matter, everyone was on cloud nine.

Recently I had the privilege of returning to ONA Consultants in Perth central to shoot some new photographs.

I have used Mark’s wooden kitchen utensils for some years now. So have various wineries, restaurants and myriad clients. I wanted to photograph Mark’s products so they would convey the feeling they give when using them—that of silky smooth ease,  warmth and of being solid, yet light and comfortable in the hand. 

I often assume I’m missing the ‘art gene’. I want to understand art. I try hard but am mostly left devoid of feeling or understanding. So the impact of this piece caught me off guard and knocked me sideways.

Artist, Liliana Stafford, asked me to come and have a look at some new pieces of her work so we could discuss how to photograph them. She pointed to this piece and told me it’s name: The Refugee Rug. The beauty of the small rug—knitted in golden thread with a soft red band in the middle and the grey edging bands, so reminiscent of warm, comfortable rugs—was the first thing I noticed. Then the barbed wire hangar tightened my chest and the beautiful, yet weight-laden stones pulling down on the rug brought a lump to my throat and my eyes welled up in tears. I looked at this thing, this piece of art that communicated to me so clearly the desperate need people have, yet the barbs we stick out to them to keep them at bay.

Even now, having spent time with this piece in my studio, photographing it, getting to know it, trying to tame it, the tears still well up. The salvation for me is knowing I don’t have a missing gene—I just needed the right artist, the right piece of art to speak to me. As for the refugees for whom this piece speaks…god help you, because our governments will not!