For Those Who've Come Across the Seas. 2016
letterpress print installation
For those who’ve come across the seas is an installation comprised of individually hand embossed pages, using the slow medium of traditional letterpress, which aims to disrupt the outspoken bigotry that inundates online forums.
Each white page, embossed with a message of intolerance and bigotry questions self- proclaimed Australians’ sense of entitlement and challenges their intent to purge Australia of all things ‘Non Australian’. In a society saturated with the solidarity afforded by such forums and social media, For Those Who've Come Across the Seas challenges the anonymity that a permeating culture of prejudice provides to these vocal and xenophobic communities.
Originally installed on a single wall as a reference to the welcome walls – tributes to Australia’s immigrant history - For those who’ve come across the seas has been adapted to be installed within a shipping container as a larger metaphor for how Australians perceive immigrants and particularly asylum seekers. Actively dehumanized by the media, desperate communities seeking refuge are reduced to commodities whose import value is determined by Australia’s own unyielding terms.
