Direction, Cinematography & Editing
A film that follows Sandy through his process of developing his most recent body of work. (a link to the full film will be shared upon request)
Notes on the film
by Manush John
On the morning of the 14th of October 2016 I captured my first clip of Sandy returning to a barbed wire fence that delineated one piece of farm property from another. This fencing was cladded with lantana and other vicious looking thorns that even I who had spent my entire childhood running around this landscape couldn’t recognise.
The thorns that once enmeshed and protected a tree now lay purposefully on the ground protecting a farmers property from grazers and other curious wanderers. On that cold morning I watched through the lens of my camera as Sandy carefully undid the dried prickly bush, discriminately picking from it the material that he needed to complete the work that he had started back home. When he was done taking what he needed, he carefully put the shrub back where he found it, so it could go back to serving its purpose.
There is a deceptive simplicity to his work and therein lies the intrigue for me. Beyond the familiar geometric patterns made of piercing wood, and beyond the blood spilled to weave these thorns into their inevitable compositions lies an inquiry that continues to engage me. With time and repeated sittings, new worlds begin to manifest on these wooden backings.
I see his work as a kind of negotiation between the designs he experiences in nature and the implementation of his own aesthetic explorations. It is unburdened by the aesthetics and preoccupation of the time. 
What he is dealing with is direct first-hand experience, and as Antony Gormley puts it, you can simply sit and attend to the fact of being and discover a philosophical truth. I feel the work that he does is an acknowledgement of what is around him, and the work becomes an experiment in being faithful to what he sees. When it does come together, it becomes an invitation and a portal into a world of tenderness where these thorns speak a language of time, of struggle and purpose. 

The exhibition continues at Kynkyny's Online art gallery:
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