Jacky Cheng is currently working with the community of Margaret River. This residency forms part of one of Spaced’s current programs, Rural Utopias.

Jacky Cheng is an artist and an art educator based in Broome, Western Australia. Cheng's work is fundamentally about identity and awareness through cultural activities  and memories of home; country and relationships. Her significant concern are about correlating and weaving narratives from her native experiences whilst mapping the esoteric and social relationships of her origins and her new found home, environment and social surroundings.

Here, Jacky shares an update from Margaret River.

No rest for the wicked. On Sunday May 15, I signed up for a tour at the Witchcliffe Ecovillage. So, I took this opportunity to walk with Mike Hulme, Michelle Sheridan and Jodie Passmore to learn about the Witchcliffe Ecovillage’s vision and ethos. The morning kicked off with Mike Hulme giving a brief presentation about the next stage of land release. I can feel there was great interest in the room as people were enthusiastic about this -  a sustainable, energy efficient lifestyle model. A couple from Singapore flew in just to attend this talk too! This developer’s model of a highly acclaimed self-reliant caring community also incorporates the most up to date technology such as electric car charging station in every home to which it is highly desirable that one should be motivated to ditch molecules for electrons.  Ecovillage is not a new concept but I can see why this is such an attractive and enticing choice in our urgency to collaboratively and with ethical conscience to protect earth with a shared belief system to live in harmony. Much like the permaculture principles of “earth care, people care, and fair share.” I could’ve easily made a sea-change.

But on the fringe of Margaret River town, I witnessed increased land development. It is really unsettling to see one side of the road entirely bulldozed and the other side with mature trees and greens for acres - a stark contrast. Margaret River seems to be the drawcard for people wanting to make a transformation for its obvious reasons and the demand of living in the regions has increased exponentially in the past couple of years.  As I drove past these massive land-clearing sites, signs of land and home for sale, I can’t help but to think of the effect of land clearing that destroy plants and local ecosystems and removes the food and habitat on which other native species rely. Our famous Australian architect Glenn Murcutt’s philosophy of working harmoniously in a built environment … touch the earth lightly is definitely not present here… yet.  Just like many sites up in the Kimberley where land clearing for industrial profits seems to be the constant environmental battle. I digress.

My final two weeks was going to be a race to the end to complete the paper patchwork blanket project. Deb and Dave so generously opened their home studio for a few of us to work on this expansive paper blanket. Collaboration moves beyond the power of one to the power of team. I declare myself open to the input and wisdom of everyone to contribute towards the project. If anything has thought me over the years when working with people is that community projects are no different than any high functioning corporate team tasks. It is all about negotiation, compromise, trust, spirit, and enthusiasm – utmost main ingredient to a successful delivery.

As a slight diversion from the hours of stitching papers, the team took a detour around Deb and Dave’s bush property. They built their property from ground up and all evidence were well documented in their thick physical photo album. I’ve much enjoyed flipping pages than finger swiping photo albums. We even found out that we have common friends whom they’ve known all their lives living in Broome. Yes, very much a Broome/Margaret River serendipitous common story.  As we walked past Dave’s glorious shed, Deb prompted him to show us his Halloween dystopian zombie exterminator costume and zombie-buster proton pack made entirely from recycled plastic and found items. Even more glorious is the act of pretending to be the exterminator in a zombie flamethrowing scene. Hilarious and a much-welcomed distraction.

A few community members were really taken by the story of the ‘Lost Blanket’ noticeboard post and wanted to respond to the paper patchwork blanket project via spoken words. Vivienne Garrett, homegrown Australian-based theatre, film and television actress and voice artist currently living in Margs, whom I’ve been so lucky to meet and exchanged ideas sent me on a dreamscape of a theatre production about intergenerational connections and relationships with our family and society. Vivienne shared a personal story of her connection with a crochet blanket, love, relationship, and the loss of a very dear friend. It was very moving and I was all teared up. I love dreaming, one day someone may pick up the ‘Lost Blanket’ story and create opportunities for an on-stage production – dance, play .. anything.  

I met Sari Bennett during the first Orizome workshop. She is a ‘spoken word poet’ and a wonderful and engaging artist who can morph, string, and create words in images and words that even ‘paint’ an action. She’s written a beautiful poetry to accompany the project for our final reveal of the blanket.

There is a small town of colourful people

nestled in a curling coastline

it is a place that has been called by

different names at different times

there are criss crossing lines

all over its surface

 trails of pitter patter footprints etched

across tusk coloured sand

some are silly soft and willy nilly

whirlwinds of unfolding childhoods

others are steady and age old

stepping slowly through the autumn cold

as they simply become less lost

there is morning frost

for tens of thousands of years

  people have walked in this wind

their chests expanded like bellows

amongst the mustard yellows

and the smoked ochres

in slippery piles of slumped seaweed

there are purple blankets of distant rain

velvet and vast

there is crackled golden cellophane

that heaves and swells

there are musty smells

in the olive green that sprays

from the salty nostrils of the burly beast

there is crackling copper

that claps loudly with thunderous applause

or is it the sound of weapon fire

from a faraway war

it smacks at the shifting shores

until fleshy flanks are bruised

blacks and blues and purply inks

there is a pomegranate sun that sinks

 behind swirly skirts of innocent pearly pinks

there are lizard tail greens that lurk in the shallows

and slurp cappuccino froth

from the tides moving edges

 a small town of colourful people

nestled in a curling coastline

it is a place that has been called by

different names at different times

there are criss crossing lines

all over its surface 

- by Sari Bennett -

Come the day to reveal the community project at Margaret River HEART, Francesco has been working hard in organising and keeping track with our schedule. At 4.30pm, we both welcomed Margaret River community members to join Francesco, and myself in revealing a community project that we all came together to collaboratively make and respond with shared stories.  We made a very large paper patchwork blanket as a reflection of comfort and to regenerate our thoughts on what is important in our lives. We invited the audience to come sit with us under the blanket and reflect. Responses were the comfort of a ‘blanket’ as a symbolic shield from whatever is going on in the outside world to how it provides a sense of safety, during the cold, scary and tempestuous times in our lives. Perhaps this therapeutic relationship between a stranger (me) and Margaret River residents is built on empathy, respect, trust, honesty, transparency, nonjudgement, and unconditional positive regard to what it means to live amongst community and share a metaphorical blanket. The community’s shared blanket stories are now proudly displayed at the HEART, Margaret River.

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