This series of images began in 2009 while I was artist in residence at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney.

Wandering the gardens I became fascinated with graffiti scratched into the bamboo. Some of the graffiti seemed to be a simple assertion of place and time but much of it was a declaration of love.

It occurred to me that the first lovers in these gardens were the First Nation People of Australia.

Looking for a metaphor to hold this idea I superimposed images of lovers’ graffiti over an image referencing Dürer’s engraving of Adam and Eve (a symbol of the lovers just prior to their expulsion from the garden of Eden), some of the graffiti almost resembling body paint and resonating fortuitously with this metaphor of dispossession and loss.