Your name, ending with the curious “Ahhhh”, leads to the grain of a place that defies agribusiness encroachment. In sixteen weeks of back-and-forth, you reshaped me. During this time, I mourned the loss of Huxley, often weeping at that spot behind the public pool, imagining him there. You became a refuge from city dressage.
Tina Stefanou in Carnamah, 2022. Photo courtesy of the artist.
Condensing the myriad paradoxes and complexities I encountered during my time with you into these three-hundred-something words is beyond my capacity. Attempting to do so would mean succumbing to a form of writing and expression Michael Taussig terms “agribusiness writing.” This type of writing obfuscates the processes of production, operating under the assumption that writing’s primary function is to convey information, distinguishing it from writing that embraces attributes such as poverty, humour, chance, failure, loss, luck, animality, fibres, the ecstatic, and more. It erases the page’s chaotic and vibrant collaborators, spirits and tricksters.
I’ve met your barrel-chested creatures in the fields and witnessed a deer transform as we sang amidst ankle cutting stubble. Emus sprinted across plains, and a powerful poet reminded me that a campfire was all one needed. We spent nine days sewing and laughing as ‘90s pop songs played through our 5,000 kilometres of seed stitching.
Tina Stefanou, Back-Breeding, 2023, video still. Videographer: Will Normyle.
Tina Stefanou, Back-Breeding, 2023, video still. Videographer: Will Normyle.
Your charm is in simple gestures — smiles, greetings, and stray farm dogs. Light softens your terrain, making even imposing machinery appear gentle. I couldn’t help but think of the film Gladiator and its famous opening grain scene, where pre-violence brings profound stillness.
The water monsters, the Axolotls at the pub, beckon like sirens, reminding me of the possibilities of regeneration even in a muddy tank. In your presence, the anxiety of ambition and agri-art’s careerism waned. I didn’t want to subject you to tokenism or similar contrivances, nor did I aim to romanticise or infantilise. Instead, your vocal totems, the wildflowers in the gaps, were my focus.
Tina Stefanou, Back-Breeding (detail), 2023, sculpture, wool, seeds, feathers, sweat, sheep body, muscle, 3,500 kilometres of thread, seed-stitching, Agripoet(h)ics: Back-Breeding, The Ball, Fantasy Creatures, 2023, three channel video with sound. The Art Gallery of Western Australia, 2023. Photo by Dan McCabe (@artdoc_au).
On the eve of the referendum, we dressed up for The Ball, despite political storms ahead. We melded into a musical sludge, an amorphous, collective moment. Footballers, opera singers, a teenage brass band and a choir demonstrated the power of the invitation.
I placed you in the AGWA collection, a tomb, to reanimate, to make thick-with, a gra(i)nular action that shakes through fiscal abstractions. You’re not dead, despite the dwindling population, and the drought to come. Sharing the uncollectible will always be an experiment in visibility, mobility, and trust.
Tina Stefanou, Back-Breeding, 2023, sculpture, wool, seeds, feathers, sweat, sheep body, muscle, 3,500 kilometres of thread, seed-stitching. The Art Gallery of Western Australia, 2023. Photo by Dan McCabe (@artdoc_au).
As Taussig contends, people often require something to push against to feel genuine and alive, and the notion of “the economy” exploits this need. In the vast sea of grain, one snail orchid hums — that’s you.
