‘3’

Mission Statement

3 began as an experiment in 2017 to go back to my home country with a small creative team in the hopes of extracting unique visual aspects of my culture to present in a contemporary context and alongside music that would be composed throughout and after the research period. Working in reverse without having any music yet was a head fuck to say the least and I really discovered  muscles that I didn’t know existed within my creative body. 

Initially, I’d gone into the experience feeling pretty excited for what I considered my first big art project. The project was meant to deconstruct people’s misconceptions of what a Papua New Guinean is because of how I constantly had to field useless enquiries from white people who wanted to know if we all still ate people or why I was so pretty for a Papua New Guinean. What I didn’t fully realise was how callous I’d gotten from trying to maintain a career as a Warabung, Morobe, Tolai, Niu Ailan post colonial Papua New Guinean in a predominantly white space that operates on stolen indigenous land. Quite immediately this whole experience ended up being a very expensive therapy session on the damages code switching can create for women of colour when trying to survive in spaces that don’t understand where you come from. 

The world has changed remarkably and in some senses very fast since we started this journey 3 years ago. We are now in a pandemic, black lives matter has thrown us into a revolution, I had a kid and nearly died doing it, my producer and co-writer Jack Grace moved to Paris, got engaged and is now stranded in France because of COVID, whilst my plans to move back to PNG in March were also halted. Now after finishing the musical component of  3, all I can say is that I don’t feel like I have to prove anything to anyone anymore. This album is about me letting go and accepting that not everyone is gonna get me. I don’t even want to be easily figured out anyway because being a multi-faceted woman of colour is perfectly acceptable even if it causes people to shift uncomfortably in their seats. For hundreds of years we have been viewed through the legacy of white history and though this has plagued my entire career, it doesn’t make me . 

So here it is.  3. A perfectly acceptable odd number, just like me - a bit odd. A bit queer. Thinks she’s a bit cool but really just a big nerd. As slow and breezy as a New Islander but also as stubborn and passionate as a Highlander. A bit Australian but also a bit kiwi. A bit short and a bit not the right kind of black to be commercial enough. A bit full of joy but also a bit angry. A bit privileged but also a but disadvantaged. A bit brought up in church and a bit sinful. A bit past the used by date according to industry standards because she had a baby but fuck it, I’d like to see you pull a human out of your dick whilst creating an album. A bit obsessed with death, sex, life, spirits, fashion, expensive cocktails, art, board games, rice and bully beef, sitting on the beach all day and living beyond my means. And definitely not your normal cup of tea out of a fucking dainty little English teacup. As much as I’ve tried to pour myself into that teacup over the years, I’ve accepted that I’m really better suited to a brilliantly well charcoaled aluminum kettle full of black tea leaves cooked on a very lived in fire built upon the soil that smells like my mother, my Aine, my Pupu and and those that came before who said ‘reach for the stars but always come back to us’.

I am full to the brim of stories that many don’t have the privilege to hold within themselves; some I know quite well and some live deep in my DNA that I won’t have enough lifetimes to unpack. But the ones I know, I will tell how I want to because I can. So here is a collection of love letters to 3 entities - myself, my country and those I love both here and now departed. .