Space, Time, Memory – A Special Graphic Edition
Joshua Santospirito • 30 September 2022
When it comes to understanding landscape, community, history and our place within them, I am often struck by the inadequacy of words. The graphic narratives collected here offer different ways of representing interconnectivity across space.
Sam Wallman’s pen carves the geography of two banks of a river, helping us to conceive of space using the page itself. Meg O’Shea’s ongoing search for a birth mother places Korean subway infographics next to diagrammatic representations of a missing mother’s presence within the body.
In works published alongside one other, Safdar Ahmed and Zeinab Mir draw the ties that connect a community, each artist using only the space of a single page. Pat Grant’s Vanish Coast comments on history and cultural change through its engagement with coastal architecture.
Buildings also feature in Matt Huynh’s multimodal piece depicting the history of his hometown of Cabramatta – a tumultuous suburb surrounded by an unwelcoming Australia. Finally, Rachel Ang’s chameleonic artistry traces a remarkable pencil-line through the world of Australian comics using the visual linguistics created by artists in that very community, whether for evil or for good.
Seed Water
If all this water, all the Birrarung got pulled out of the ground, & put up into the sky…
…cld we comprehend it?
A Part of Me is Still Unknown
I had begun to take on some of that stereotypical adoptee narrative I had always tried so hard to avoid. I now accepted Korea as part of me…because my birth mum was part of me. And that meant a part of me was unknown.
Community / A Common Space
As a child in Iran, I would see Afghans working as cheap labour.
Particularly in construction.
Such discrimination occurs wherever there is inequality.
Vanish Coast
Surfing magazines are full of fantasy landscapes
The image of a breaking wave is kind of a lie.
It refuses to acknowledge the moments of before or after,
moments when things are less than perfect
(Note: this essay is on Pat Grant's website and was published in Issue 40 of White Horses.)
Cabramatta
Our town, Cabramatta, changed with the international conflict of the moment, as each new wave of refugees was resettled by the migrant hostel behind the local school.
A Stone in the River
I was going to draw a map of the comics community – all its enclaves, contested territories, peripatetic travellers & so on – but I’m resisting the urge, it’s been done before & will be done again. It’s important & commendable to recount history & record the contemporary moment – but it also makes me nervous. What is this fear? Of leaving someone out? Of stopping the flow of this stream we all contribute to just so I can count each drop of water?Of centring myself in a community which is so unusual, rich & diverse (but could be moreso!)?
By the Guest Editor: Islands and Ships
This special graphic edition of The Circular was brought to you by Joshua Santospirito. In closing, we’d like to share his piece on making sense of his and his family’s place among the islands and continents of their migrations past and present.
I contemplated family I’d never known. How can I track them across space? And across time? Also. I’ve been thinking I’m not certain…that islands are like ships at all. If flitting from place to place is your normal state then perhaps moving from continent to continent is easier for you.
Ships are like birds
Islands are like nests
Joshua Santospirito is an award-winning graphic novelist and multimedia artist from Tasmania living on muwinina land. His art practices and writing grapple with identity and landscape. He is co-director of the Comic Art Workshop and has been the long term convenor of Hobart's Small Press Zine Fair.