abandon to begin (2024)
Single channel video
13:40 minutes
Created on Gadigal Country 
First exhibited in Language Exchange (2024) at the Fairfield City Museum & Gallery curated by Amy Prcevich

Mudhanygindagirri banginha?
Wudhagarbigirridyu ngadhigu yalmambildhaanygu.
Ngali yanhagirri.
Ngiyanhi marumbul ngan.


Learning Wiradjuri is more than learning the shapes of a language in the mouth or figuring translations back and forth to English. This language does not neatly translate to English because this language is of a place and that place has no need for the concepts and controls that English holds in its foundations. To truly learn Wiradjuri is to understand that the language is the soil from which the culture grows, that Country is embedded in the language, and language is born of Country. Each part is inextricable from one the other, wherein the language holds the knowings and the knowings are the language. Wiradjuri language is the voice of Wiradjuri Country, to speak is to speak Country. And so to embrace this learning, the colonisers’ thinking must be unlearnt. English can no longer exist as the translation point, it must be abandoned to truly understand. This video work is a process of accepting English as a tool in fighting colonisation and learning to move beyond its confines to the truth of Country and the languages it speaks.