Sara Bowen

Flight of the paper balloons is a series of collaborative artworks produced over 8 months by Sara Bowen, Darren Bryant, Liz Deckers, Rebekah Evans, Louise Irving, Joanna Kambourian and Tim Mosely as part of the codex event programme co-ordinated by Tim Mosely and facilitated by Southern Cross University’s School of Arts and Social Science.  Codex events are a series of workshops that bring invited artists together to explore ideas using the medium of artists’ books.

The starting point for codex event 4 was the idea of crossing boundaries, sparked off by references to fire balloons made in the remote mountainous regions of northern Taiwan.  In a geographical area where travel between settlements has historically been difficult, villagers have developed the use of paper hot air balloons fuelled by suspended candles as an elegant way of communicating with neighbouring villages.  Balloons are made during festivals, culminating in a ceremonial release of many balloons into the night sky where they can be seen from far away.  Fire balloons are also used in other Asian cultures in acts of remembrance, offered up into the air as a remembrance of loved ones and as a communication with their spirit.

The participating artists made the paper for the balloons from a variety of natural and recycled fibres, pulp printing and screen printing photographic images from refugee journeys and text from Australian Immigration Department documents onto the resulting sheets.  When dry each sheet of paper was cut into gores and glued together to make the body of the balloons. 

 Many refugees come to Australia by sea and with this in mind the balloons were taken to the beach where the balloons took on additional significance: an unexpected encounter with a group of displaced Timorese children brought life to the balloons as they were played with.

Fragile, hollow and grounded, the balloons were later taken back to the studio and reshaped into books.  They unfold into boat shapes, another echo of the refugees’ precarious journey to Australian shores, and the boats were named after Australian federal government detention centres.