Cirrus@Austlit

'In the far north of New South Wales, as fans swung wildly in the heat and sweat beaded on our upper lips in the high summer, my year 11 English teacher sweepingly declared at the front of the classroom that a piece of art is only what we make of it. Our vision, how we see, determines the meaning of the work. Why is the sky grey? Well, that depends on who you ask. Postmodernism had infected the high school teaching syllabi of regional Australia. Subjectivity reigned. The author, was, of course, dead. The art was in what we saw. I was, as was often the case then, the only person of colour in the room. But I couldn’t imagine how this would frame the borders of my imagination, how significantly it could shape my vision.' (Introduction)