THE EDGE OF AMBIVALENCE

Ebony Secombe

How do I write about a time and place that changed my life so profoundly? 

Z block was where my perspective on life began to blossom from a bleak, shriveled seed into a spiny, yet determined shrub. Perhaps not grand or romantic but sturdy and resilient, teetering on the edge of a stereotype, not exactly original but here, surviving regardless of the climate, the blasting heat, the uprooting, all of it. 

It has been just over 10 years since I graduated. One of the last, dwindling cohort of students to graduate from the University of Western Sydney, with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, before the degree was discontinued and the university became Western Sydney University… I pause here a while, it seems too hard to put into words, to fathom that the place I left behind after graduation is truly gone. 

It is. I’ve been to the building – completely transformed.

I remember there was a time when we were optimistic despite the circumstances. These things tend to happen in cycles and that support for the arts would return… Yet here we are.

On one hand I feel incredibly excited and privileged to be here now, preparing to exhibit among such a wonderful and exciting group of artists. Some are artists I know well and others I have admired from afar, many with whom I am yet to become familiar… Artists who are still practicing decades later.

On the other hand, the broader context is frightening.

So I stopped writing.

I don’t have the words for this.

So I stopped writing.

I don’t have the words for this.

So I start making.

Remaking the work I created so long ago.

In a place that was so much more than a second home to me.

Remaking a work that I created more than a decade ago, with materials I haven’t touched in years. I find my hands leading the way. After all of this time my hands remember so perfectly, the clipping and twisting of metal. The rough sensation of paper in my hands as I push and pull at it, threading and wrapping. It comes so naturally. The motion so automatic that it triggers something in me. 

The words that were lost come rushing out.

When everything seemed hopeless Z block brought me back to the edge of ambivalence. When everything seems hopeless what I learnt at Z block keeps me on the edge of ambivalence. Ambivalence seems like a strange word to use as a synonym for hope but it is the one I have chosen. In this ugly, messy, broken world I can’t quite bring myself to feel hopeful but I can feel ambivalent. 

A sense of ambivalence is enough to fuel my persistence. 

It still fuels my practice.

Z block was where I learnt to embrace the complex and fickle nature of my little version of the world. Z block was the place where I finally started to feel a sense of what I am capable of as an artist, and a creative and critical thinker. Z block was the place where I started to find a sense of belonging and connection with peers I hadn’t previously known. Z block is the reason so many of us are here right now.

That is why, in my ambivalent, messy little world, Z block still matters.

It brought me to the edge of ambivalence.