Light Bodies
on art, recovery, and the courage to be seen
A spoken fragment from the Light Bodies evening
Last Saturday evening, I opened my first solo exhibition, Light Bodies.
I had written a short speech to share where the work came from — not only the paintings themselves, but the long, quiet process of recovery, stillness, and returning to movement that shaped them.
I’m sharing it here as part of the exhibition — a written trace of that opening night, and of what it took to arrive.
Speech 2nd May
I’d like to acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the land we are gathered on tonight — the Whadjuk people of the Noongar nation.
I pay my respects to Elders past and present, and acknowledge the continuing connection of First Nations people to land, waters, culture, and community.
As this exhibition speaks with landscape, body, and place, I hold that connection with respect tonight.
♡
Thank you all so much for being here tonight.
It means a lot to have you here as I share this work for the first time in this way.
I’d especially like to thank Louise and Amante & Co for generously hosting this exhibition.
Thank you also to Faye — for the inspiration, and for thinking of me when there was a last-minute opening here and getting everything ready.
Thank you to my parents, KC and Yin, for generously sponsoring the food and drinks tonight.
And because this exhibition has really been three years in the making, I’d like to give a special thank you to Sarah, Christine, Elena, Claire at Featherstone Physio, the Chemo at Home team, Maia, Helena, Sezen, and Dr Hillary Martin.
Your care and support for my health and recovery have helped make this moment possible.
Finally, thank you to everyone who helped me bring this together — with hanging, printing, encouragement, practical help, food, and steady support along the way.
♡
Before I say a little about the works, I want to invite a slower way of looking.
These are quiet works. They come from stillness, so they ask for a quieter kind of looking.
In some of them, the landscape only appears once you’ve spent a little time with it.
The exhibition is here for the month, so you’re very welcome to return and meet the work again slowly.
♡
I would like to share a small story about the first time I remember showing my art.
I was in Year Four. It was an Easter egg art competition, and everyone else had made these beautiful, sparkly eggs with tinsel and colour.
Mine was a drawing, in pencil and coloured pencil, of Jesus on the cross. I remember having my well-chosen pencil and rubber in hand, painstakingly trying to draw what I hoped was an appropriate loincloth.
I remember putting it on the wall and feeling very exposed — and very different. I didn’t have my parents with me that day, so I felt quite alone in it.
And then I won the competition.
That was my first memory of what it feels like to put something private on a wall and let other people see it.
Tonight feels like another version of that moment — except now I’m here more fully, with a body of work that has come through recovery, through listening, through the body, and through learning to return to myself.
The white space around and within these works is not empty to me.
It is breath — the silence around the mark.
A space where the body can soften,
where something subtle can be seen,
and where light can enter.
Some of you may know me through medicine, acupuncture, or Qigong. And some of you may be meeting me here first as an artist.
For me, these worlds are not separate. They all come from listening to the body — to what it carries, what it releases, and what it quietly becomes.
In this exhibition, that listening has moved into paper, water, ink, wood, and landscape.
Going through illness changed how I listen to the body. Painting became part of how I made sense of that change.
I’m still learning to navigate this inner world — this landscape of recovery, memory, fear, beauty, and return.
I know the road I have travelled is not a common one. Not everyone will understand everything in the work, and that’s okay.
But I have learnt that where there has been much darkness, there can also be much light.
And perhaps that is what I’m sharing tonight — not only what I found along the way, but the light that came through it.
So tonight, through these works, I’m grateful to share and celebrate that light with you.
♡
I’d like to invite you now to raise your glasses.
To the darkness we have moved through,
the light that still finds us,
and the courage to be seen.
Thank you for being here.