Perspectives on life and death, grief and activism, community and care
This two-part program features conversations and workshops reflecting on life and death, grief and activism, community and care. Each event provides an opportunity to hear from invited community members who will share their research and lived experiences in an open conversation. This will be followed by a guided workshop to encourage collective participation in the spirit of remembrance, creativity, celebration, and resistance.
Resurrection cycles
Hear from Benjamin Riley in conversation with Geraldine Fela, Emma Kirby, and Victoria Spence as they share community reflections and approaches for growing, tending, and nurturing conditions for living and dying well. Geraldine Fela shares research about nurses and frontline workers during the height of Australia’s AIDS crisis, and Emma Kirby discusses the relational and social needs of end-of-life care. Following these discussions, Life Rites founder Victoria Spence leads a workshop on creating ‘kit bags’ to navigate legal, funeral, and community systems that can help us live and die well.
In an interview at Prospect Cottage, Derek Jarman reflected, “Gardening is central because when gardening, one is entering into another time, into eternal returns and cycles. Those are the resurrection cycles in my life.”
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‘At the Sea’s Edge’ is presented in conjunction with ‘Derek Jarman: Delphinium Days’ at UNSW Galleries from 14 February – 4 May 2025.
The program takes inspiration from Derek Jarman’s Garden (1995) – a collection of diary entries and poems reflecting his sense of mortality and living on borrowed time. They were printed alongside photographs of his evolving garden at Dungeness, flourishing despite its harsh environment. For Jarman, gardening nourished him throughout his life; the garden was an “anchor” and a site where the edges of grief and loss met resilience and joy:
Here at the sea’s edge
I have planted my dragon-toothed garden
to defend the porch,
steadfast warriors
against those who protest their impropriety
even to the end of the world.
A fathomless lethargy has swallowed me,
great waves of doubt broken me,
all my thoughts washed away.
The storms have blown salt tears,
burning my garden,
Gethsemane and Eden.
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Geraldine Fela is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of History and Archaeology at Macquarie University. Her research and teaching traverses histories of gender and sexuality, labour, social movements and medicine. She has been widely awarded for her work examining the role of nurses during Australia’s HIV and AIDS crisis and has appeared in both scholarly and popular outlets. She is currently working on a new project, examining the 1998 waterfront dispute between Patrick Stevedores and the Maritime Union of Australia.
Emma Kirby (she/her) is a Professor of Sociology in the School of Social Sciences, and the Associate Dean Societal Impact, Equity and Engagement for the Faculty of Arts, Design and Architecture. She is interested in the sociology of health, illness, and care, and her research draws on a range of case studies to provide a critical analysis of advanced illness and end of life care, mapping its character and significance. She currently leads two projects, funded by the Australian Research Council, focusing on transitions out of caring, and on the implications of pandemic-related delays for experiences and care at the end of life.
Victoria Spence has been working as an artist, cultural producer, and Life Rites practitioner since 1988. She has made work in Live Art at the intersections of cultural, contemporary, community and creative arts practice as a performer, dramaturg, curator and producer. In 2010, as part of the ‘Connections’ residency, she established the not-for-profit organisation ‘Living with our Dead’, resulting in the project ‘Picnic Among Friends’, a yearly memorial event from 2010–19. Alongside her artistic and ceremonial practice, she is the founder of Life Rites, Holistic Funeral Directors specialising in bespoke doula-led end-of-life, funeral and ongoing bereavement care in the greater Sydney area.
Benjamin Riley is a freelance writer and journalist based in Sydney, Australia. Benjamin writes about politics, culture, LGBTI issues and mental health, and his work has appeared in publications including Junkee, Archer, PopMatters, Overland and The Lifted Brow. Benjamin has previously worked as Victorian Editor for national LGBTI newspaper Star Observer. He also co-hosts and produces Queers, a podcast about critical queer politics, with writer Simon Copland. In 2014 Benjamin received the prestigious Victorian AIDS Council Media Award for his coverage of HIV and LGBTI health, and in 2015 he was a finalist for Media Person of the Year in the Victorian LGBTI Community Awards.
Image: Derek Jarman, The Garden 1990. Image courtesy: Basilisk Communications
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