John Stephen Britten |
Juma ali sherzad |
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Works on paper
In mid-2014 the Swan Hill Regional Art Gallery's Director, Ian Tully, called for works to be sold at the end of year exhibition known as Frameless.
Juma Ali Sherzad, whom I had come to know through a mutual acquaintance, kindly agreed to collaborate with me in the production of four pieces on paper. The collage is mine and the words are Juma Ali's (though the poet's tremor, almost certainly produced by the stress of being lost in the world with little on which to survive but hope, meant that Juma Ali's son drew down the calligraphy on instruction from his Dad). The lines are taken directly from poems Juma Ali Sherzad wrote in his journal while becalmed and apparently doomed in the Indian Ocean several years earlier. |