‘Memento - pictures of you’ (after The Cure) are personal works of the artist’s loving relationship of this land and its inhabitants, during her three years spent in residence at Bundanon Trust and the Shoalhaven region.
Consisting of paintings and works on paper, combinations of ‘free style’ Australian ikebana landscape arrangements with fauna, predominately of the loving pair of Gang Gang cockatoos that visited her daily in Tapitallee.
Initially Kalabishis set herself a journey to create works of the Shoalhaven river, the Bundanon floor to sky to sea. However due to historic circumstances preventing her from returning to the region for two years, these visions shifted into nostalgic mementos of the romantic landscapes she walked and ran, stopping to gather foliage for arrangements under the watchful eyes of its inhabitants.
The Greek poet Callimachus’ poignant poem leveraged this art journey to push Kalabishis’ own unique visual language of the Australian landscape.
’Leave open ways and trodden tracks alone and go the way that’s narrow but your own’.