Saskia Haalebos (artist) and Jane Rawson (author)

About the work

‘FLOOD’ uses an excerpt from Jane Rawson’s story, Lake (2016), which is told from the perspective of a woman who finds herself unexpectedly dead at the bottom of Lake Burley Griffin along with hundreds of other Canberrans; it was inspired by the implosion of Canberra Hospital. Shags is writing the text backwards directly onto the inside of the glass windows overlooking the lake. Over time, the repetition of the words and density of marks will ‘flood’ her in to the space, thus retelling the story in situ, mimicking the creation of the lake and creating a visible metaphor for her own exquisite dyslexia.

Image courtesy of the artist

About the artist

Saskia Haalebos is a trained printmaker who uses performance and projections for installations based on text, colour and audio. She also writes experimental music scores and makes low-fi books and zines.

Having dyslexia and synaesthesia means her processing style makes it possible to see the interconnectivity of everyday surroundings, internal and external, abstract and actual. Most of her work is about alternative forms of communication. She understands her environment in non-verbal ways, such as via colour, sensation, noise and tactility. Language is definitely not her first language.

Jane Rawson is the author of two novels, a novella and a non-fiction guide, ‘The Handbook: Surviving and living with climate change’. Her short fiction and essays, which are mostly about the environment, have been published in Australia and overseas in journals including ‘Overland’, ‘Meanjin’ and ‘Griffith Review’. Her most recent novel, ‘From the Wreck’, was longlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award and won the Aurealis Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. Born and raised in Canberra, she has lived in San Francisco, Prague and Melbourne: she still misses cold frosty mornings and ACTION bus stops, but not being swooped by magpies.