BONDI – a poem in response.

This is a response of mine to Bob Dylan’s “With God On Our Side” and an interview I watched with a remarkable minister and journalist Chris Hedges and his response to Bondi in the light of 20 people/children a day being killed by Israel in the West Bank/Ramalah and Palestine since the cease fire. 

The cries from our sand,
Rise in one chorus.
Young men in their strength 
Go, finish him off! 
God’s on our side!
God’s on our side!

20 children die every day in Ramalah. 

Shots sudden stoppage.
Silence descends.
A man and his son.
A picnic is buried 
in blood and despair.
Heroes emerge.
“Great Aussie Spirit”. 

20 children die every day in Ramallah.

The grief is like glue
It sticks us together 
Untenable shock,
the darkness,
the fear.
A mother, a wife without any knowledge
A child only 10
A country withdraws.

20 children die every day in Ramalah. 

Flowers as high as Mt Everest rise
Ever – rest we all sing
as the tears rush flow down.
The blame is now broadcast
Point scoring has shifted 
From shooters of violence to 
Prime Ministerial end point.

20 children die every day in Ramallah.

Hanukah dies, 
the Holocaust visits.
A tribe is reborn 
again and again.
The Exodus enlivens 
the myths of salvation 
While elsewhere and everywhere

20 children die every day in Ramalah. 

Peter Breen

Love can be slow to grow.

As in art, love can be sudden and full of madness, or slow and full of strategic intention. My experience in love is both and in respect of understanding difference has certainly been slow. The following is the text of my homily given at St Mary’s in Exile in 2018. I present it with some trepidation.

HOMILY

SMX

October 13,14, 2018

AGAINST THE FLOW OF MY CONSTRUCTED SELF

LOSING MY RELIGION

READINGS:1 Kings 19 : 9-13Psalm 22: 1,2 Mark 10:17-31

The Centre for the Less Good Idea statement of purpose*

In March last year I hosted “Hang Dada” an exhibition in the upstairs space at the Jugglers building by a young Brisbane artist who referenced on line gay porn in the production of his vibrant multi coloured sensual and confronting screen print exhibition. 

On the opening night Jugglers was full of a very energetic and enthusiastic crowd of party goers supporting this nervous young artist in a space where he felt affirmed and free to express part of his journey story in his chosen art medium. 

In 1994 the United Nations “International year of the Family” a pastor in a regional Qld town led a public march of a few hundred people against the ABC’s screening of the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras in prime family viewing time and marched to the local ABC Station with a petition expressing their concerns about the impact of that ABC decision on family values. That pastor was me.

In 2008 I joined a Sydney Baptist pastor’s group – 100 Revs – who marched in The Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras to express solidarity with the gay community and to say sorry for the church’s lack of welcome towards the gay community. 

This year – 2018 –   I voted yes to the Marriage Equality Act Postal Vote

When I was six years old I ran home from a birthday party and hid under my bed when I saw what I thought was the delivery of beer to the party. It was Coca Cola. 

In 2000 as a 50 year old pastor I had my first beer in Amsterdam and felt an overwhelming sense of distress by the experience such was the conditioning of my conscience. Thinking I was a progressive Christian made no difference to how my inner constructed self-felt.

However that distress soon shifted as I later went on to become a happy  Licencee /Publican at Jugglers. 

But then my distress returned when I had an online Facebook confrontation this year with a former parishioner of mine who was shocked at what I was saying about my disillusionment Christianity:

Greg re being an ex-pastor and knowing the truth but denying it: I have been reflecting on both of these and read the thread of this post. In the formal sense yes I was a pastor ( and was yours at one point) That is no longer the case – I have finished with that organisation and do not “serve/minister” within any formal structure/organisation now. Re knowing the truth and denying it: I used to think I knew it and never denied it. Now as I am in the final third of my life I do not claim I know what “it” is except this: love towards people that is extended when it is very demanding to do so and which might look like kindness, welcome and listening. My assessment of my success at this endeavour is – only occasional. As well – I am drawn at every moment of my living into a hunger for seeing/knowing god( ground of being) which is not the domain of one religion- Xn or other. I used to think it was. I am not an atheist and do believe that a Jesus person lived but the Xn religion with all the good it has done is not for me ( in the traditional construct) and that plays into my aversion to most social constructs. The mind controls and systems in education, religion and politics including The Greens, ALP and LNP are systems that are “playing” out under the shadow of horrors present and future that fill me with hope, sadness and anger. And so I make art. With respect. 

What is it that makes us what we are, that conditions and constructs us? 

Why is real change out of belief systems so fraught?

If nothing else, it seems that our being is so deeply constructed that the response to change can be unbelievably visceral – even to the point of illness. This past week has been Mental Health week and some of us know what the effect of change, trauma or grief can have on our minds, emotions and personal inner stability. 

Pastors and priests are not gods, are not robots and are not immune to change, to the effect of religious systems that suddenly begin to collapse around them as they begin to see things differently, sometimes because of burnout and political forces within the religious group.

Once I left formal pastoral responsibilities in 2002 after 20 years in denominational leadership and 52 years of never ending exposure to church growth, evangelism, missionary activity, triumphalism, prayer meetings, church politics, exegesis, hermeneutics and sermon after sermon – I began to see differently as the collapse increased.

Of course there were positives in all those years and in all my life’s chapters, there were wonderful people full of love and of remarkable understanding. There have been ventures full of positive outcomes. And for that I am very grateful. 

But I left the predictable, unbending and unforgiving religious system. 

The reality now is that even though I am seeing differently after leaving my religion there are elements of lostness that I dwell in and that dwell in me. 

Conversely, there are liminal threshold spaces that I would never have stumbled on if I had remained in that very conservative fundamentalist protestant evangelical system. 

These liminal threshold spaces continually and gently invite me to risk another step, another forward movement away from literalism, exclusion and fear into metaphor, inclusion and beauty. 

And then there is the never ending still small voice, maybe similar to what Elijah heard, present from before I can recall that gently prods me to love the other, the friend, the enemy and the difficult person. 

And a second  – the incessant constant desire for silence, solitude and stillness and for what it might reveal. 

Old Testament prophet Elijah’s epiphany in the desert came after his heroics as a high achieving prophet and after he fled in a state of burnout and was cornered by his god, and his hunger. He was in a liminal threshold space. All kinds of things happened in those moments: light shows, cyclones and roaring winds but it was the whisper that satisfied his hunger and revealed his god to him for that moment. And from there the lights came back on, the energy returned and he knew what he had to do. This continues to be a kind of personal metaphor for me. 

The orthodox fundamentalist evangelical religious system that I have left is at its core inconsistent with the Christian Scriptures as far as I can see.

It pronounces that evangelicalism – and therefor pure Christianity – is “convertive piety” according to author Stanley Grenz in his book  “Renewing the Centre” . 

That is, in good old Billy Graham terms, evangelicalism involves quite simply that like buying a car, one is to be converted by making a decision for Jesus, repenting of all sin and so be saved from hell, be sure of heaven for ever because of that decision. To make sure that happens the convert needs to go to church every Sunday and spend the rest of life keeping oneself pious and pure from all that is sinful through holy living, bible reading and prayer and avoiding being tainted by the world. 

Each generation of evangelicals changes the language of this convertive piety but never the exclusive dualistic notion of their system. 

They don’t look the same but they are the same. 

For me that paradigm was a construct I walked away from. 

I am still not free of being a judgmental negative person. I probably should wear camel’s hair and eat locusts and wild honey. The external false self is still very much alive but it is dying. The still small voice is becoming louder than the cyclone. 

The true self, the god self, the ground of being that I am convinced the Jesus person was at one with is slowly coming to life in me. It always has been but I have allowed the external false self to dominate, held in by the restricting external religious system . Now, in this second half of life as Richard Rohr reminds us, there is nothing to lose by killing off the false self. And even if it should have happened 50 years ago – it didn’t. 

Thomas Merton said once:

“If I had a message to my contemporaries it is surely this: Be anything you like, be madmen, drunks, and bastards of every shape and form, but at all costs avoid one thing: success . . . If you are too obsessed with success, you will forget to live. If you have learned only how to be a success, your life has probably been wasted.” Thomas Merton, Love and Living

In attempting to continue down this non-success path that Merton encourages and to let the external false self die while the  inner god- self comes to life I am waging a war against the flow of my constructed self 

Being intentional about this is hard work and is easily threatened.

But it is necessary and the only path I can choose if the true self is to grow.

Being intentional about it is a bit like being a part of artist William Kenbridge’s artist centre in Johannesburg “The Not So Good Idea”. It is a safe and secure place where it’s normal and acceptable to fail in the first instance so that the second and third “not so good idea” is actually the best idea driving the new art project in community. 

For me to be intentional about the death of the false self so that the god self can emerge out of the constructed self needs that kind of environment, that kind of community, that kind of church. 

*“The Centre is a physical and immaterial space to pursue incidental discoveries made in the process of producing work. Often, you start with a good idea. It might seem crystal clear at first, but when you take it to the proverbial drawing board, cracks and fissures emerge in its surface, and they cannot be ignored. It is in following the secondary ideas, those less good ideas coined to address the first idea’s cracks, that the Centre nurtures, arguing that in the act of playing with an idea, you can recognise those things you didn’t know in advance but knew somewhere inside of you…The Centre…is a safe space for failure, for projects to be tried and discarded because they do not work.”           Peter Breen 2018 ©

Artist: Peter Breen, 2025 Mixed media on ageing found paper. Original works now part of “Body and Soul, Berlin, Artist Magazine, Issue #45” August 2025. Prints available. Please DM Peter Breen pbreen@bigpond.net.au

Making marks and music together in the same direction.

Two events in Brisbane have made their mark on me in the past week:

A first ever Australian visual art exhibition with Australian based Mexican ex pats at Vacant Assembly Art Collective and a music gig at Princess Theatre with Brisbane based music group Topology and northern Australia collective Gaba Musik. These artists’ and musicians’ public intersection with the people of Brisbane comes out of their long mark and music making history stories around cultural understanding, colonial abuse and giving voice to hope for justice in a post colonial time bearing the scars of entrenched ignorance and racism.

A range of remarkably beautiful lino-cut prints brought from practicing artists in Mexico was a bold experiment in a space where they found welcome and access for this vision of theirs for the voices of their relatives and friends in Mexico to find a new audience in Australia. It was close to a sell out where Europe’s colonial atrocities and Indian religious mythology -aka Day of the Dead – were presented to a largely Spanish speaking crowd. Purchasing this modest priced edition lino cut relief print meant this local market based self taught [former economist] artist in Mexico will have Australian $ for Christmas – so I was told. I love that the artist’s statement begins with “My battle name is…” It reminds me of graffiti artists’/writers’ tag names.

I have been working with Topology for about 2.5 years now in The Stairwell Project–Musicians in Hospitals and You Can Make Some Noise Workshops for young adult cancer patients. What I have discovered is that apart from their unbelievably amazing indie rock experimental music, this band, under violinist Christa Powell’s Creative Director leadership are working with First Nations/Indigenous people in North and North West Queensland in music workshops, creating pathways of story and music making with aboriginal young people in particular. Out of this long term investment in community and endless conversations over a number of years – funded through Arts Queensland, The Tim Fairfax Foundation and others – came this amazing event. A friend of mine and Jugglers board member Dave Fittell – himself an accomplished base player and friend of Topology founder, Robert Davidson – sent this response to me on Tuesday about the gig: [ Reprinted with permission]

“Yes, I found it incredibly encouraging, in part because a majority white-fella audience would pay money to see such a show!

On reflection here’s what I thought the works demonstrated: We have a long way to go in ‘closing the gap’, but there has been significant change in my lifetime. First Nations kids the same age as me [e.g Archie Roach ] were very likely to be separated from their families and /or grow up in circumstances where their language and culture were actively suppressed.

Last night we experienced the flourishing that can occur when such suppression is being overcome. It’s significant that two of the artists have grandparents [Mabo and Yunipingu] who successfully applied their traditions in the colonist’s legal system and music industry, smoothing the path for for their offspring to build artistic careers highlighting their culture. “

The post-colonial times the world is in, and for me that Australia is in , has deep wounds and complex benefits. We cannot return to a romantic past but we can always advance cultural understanding, stand in solidarity and respect with those with generational impacts and wounds, fight our own and our communty’s racist attitudes – and make music and art that reflect these matters. Vacant Assembly’s Mexican and Topology’s/ Gaba Musik’s events were both Third Space/Sacred Place moments. It felt as if in a world driven by indulgence, ignorance and narcissistic power brokers the desparate hunger for something much better is risking and advancing and well and truly alive!

Peter Breen

A reflective moment

ALL YOUR EGGS

When from before time

Your eggs are all in one basket

And then you find

The basket is falling apart. 

Make sure you and yours

Are given permission

(Or if not – do it early)

To unravel the basket. 

Leave the eggs in a safe place.

Some will not return.

You won’t want them any more. 

Build baskets that you’re happy with 

But put a reminder in your phone

To take your basket to another basket maker

Every now and again.

Then maybe

Burn a few baskets (not at the recycling plant). 

Let other basket holders be in their own weaving world. 

Suggest a group gathering for all kinds of baskets

But don’t waste too much time with the 

Steel or concrete basket holders. 

In fact leave them to their own basket world. 

Change is impossible. 

Your basket life 

Could make you a basket case

But if you build a good one 

That your ever evolving eggs are in 

You might not need to reject it.

Peter Breen

OCTOBER 6,2025 

Sticks from a pruning of the Lavendar Lights bush that sit in my front yard slowly degenerating. I built this about 2 weeks ago.

A FAMILY AT THE CORNER

This slide photo scanned and uploaded here is by my father, taken in 1962 on the toboggan slopes of Mount Donnabuang – freezing without snow – outside Melbourne. Left to right is my only sister, me and then brother #1. There are two other brothers, one yet to be born [ in Brisbane 1964].

The family was about to leave Melbourne. We would travel 1700 km’s to begin a new life that was humid, had very different ways of talking – and ended every sentence with “eh” or “but” – jumped out of bed at some unearlthly hour [ the earliest in the world some would say] and with everyone outside usually at the beach. There seemed to be no idea of nuance or poetry, new art or modernist architecture, libraries or art galleries. But here, in this wonderful image, my father has caught a moment in time of his eldest three in our immersion in a world we knew and loved, rare though this kind of thing was for our busy family immersed in a world of social justice rescue ventures and regular church and para church life. We were about to leave the known and immerse ourselves in the unknown. There were times of longing for what was left behind attached to adolescent excitement facililated by our sometimes too optimistic but very supportive parents.

My sister in 10year old reflective pose forseeing maybe her carreer as a trauma counsellor, composer and violist, my brother in that far off gaze as he contempled his socialist passions and journalist/academic career and me. There I am, facing the opposite direction, attempting to leap off the toboggan before slamming into the trees maybe indicative of a future of always an outsider, awkward and needing to redo life more than once. And still alive!

This is a precious photo. There is poetry here in how dad captured us. Instant movements, intentions, directions and facial experessions caught. Edge of mouth smile, far away look and a determination to stay alive and ahead of potential disasters.

And we are together. One. Just a little family being given a day with our parents and friends before the big adventure to Brisbane.

Peter Breen

LOVE

Love is so limiting

The flight to satisfaction

Can hardly be listed in the annals of love.

WB Yeats wanted a small island

The unrequited romantic leaves

Dragging arms in the dust.

Spiralled into willing

And determination

Love hovers.

Lock it in, slow, put down the bloody phone

And listen.

Being lost,

Solution-less is possibly an art form

A love desert like.

Useless and dry.

But solutions are for mechanics and doctors.

Love rides a different wave

Seas full and rough,

Smooth becalmed.

Presence enough?

No and yes.

Exhausted ears wounded heart breathless soul.

And finally an island alone.

For a few moments washed up and forgotten

A memory of one moment when I knew

That I had as best I knew

Loved.

And that was enough.

Peter Breen

Nature’s determination

Oneness

This grass tree Xanthorrhoea is in our back garden space in pride of place, carefully transferred from the pot it came in from a registered nursery. They can only be legally harvested and on sold by these nurseries in Australia. Most clandestine acquisitions don’t last in suburbia the story goes.

We have followed the care and nurture instructions from the nursery and yet after about 15 months the centre spike fell off and the leaves began to yellow. We revisited the nursery after I had done some internet reading and have now added organic native soil, intensive watering and a fish based organic fertiliser. We will see what happens.

Hidden behind the base of the main trunk however is a small new emerging trunk, just visible at ground level and in that trunk are two or three green shoots. Is it possible that this remarkable tree is not dying but has determined to try again?

Paul the nurseryman told me that plants want to live and that they have an inbuilt genetic determination. What we know of the grass tree is that it is slow growing, can be around for hundreds of years and responds with pizzaz after bushfires! That’s one option we do not want to invite in while feeling slightly more optimistic about the next few years and this particular Xanthorrhoea.

I remember that my mother who died in 2019 at 95.5 years was if nothing else as part of an Irish American immigrant family – determined! Full of life and giftedness she had stories of more than one metaphorical bushfire, affliction and success. I see this in my wife and children and now in grandchildren – the shadows of grief, making a satisfying living, aging and the multiple challenges of adolescent development. There is a determination for me to note, nurture and embrace with a constant reminder in the grass tree I see each time I go to my studio.

Peter Breen

Art

Using rubbish to follow Andy Goldsworthy in my front yard after cutting branches from the Lavendar Lights bush. These branches have now been in my front yard in this formation for about 10 days.

Art/Onness – following Andy Goldsworthy

And Goldsworthy is a British sculptor, photographer and environmentalist living in Scotland. His often ephemeral work strikes a chord for our oneness with nature.

Art tells stories (2)

The beauty of stark post fire landscape draws me in, inspires mark making, stops me with some sense of wonder.

Weeds don’t do that but I don’t spray weeds. I use an eco oil spray for beans that are being destroyed by aphids but I refuse to use any weed killer.

For transparency and loss of a commitment to my values and desperation I must say I used a Weed and Feed product on lawn last week. Today I’m digging individual weeds from the same front section of our 640 square metre block. It will be returned ( the front lawn) to native tree plants over the next 12 months.

Artist: Peter Breen 2023

Graphite, charcoal, red pencil, chalk on Arches paper

ART tells stories

The story embedded in this drawing is part of my ongoing response to climate change. I’ve been building a body of responsive work since 2020. Yes it is changing. It is not stable. It is alive ( the climate is alive) and as it changes through the infection brought about by fossil fuel burning, exploration in pristine environments, and the use of toxic chemical based insecticides – to name a few – the globe warms. It used to be called “ global warming” but the fossil fuel corporates watered down the feel of “global warming” with the cooler “climate change. More palatable like straight carrots and curved bananas.

Artists:Peter Breen

2024

Charcoal, ink, collage on found paper( encyclopaedia pages)

The colour and order of Toowoomba’s carnival of flowers was matched today by the cosmopolitan crowd. I haven’t experienced this level of cultural mix for decades. And here I was in Toowoomba, a conservative city in conservative SE Queensland.

ART

Moreton Bay Queensland , Australia

Taken on iPhone 13 Pro with Noir filter

Exploring local grass marshes

Last week I explored a local grassland marsh with one of my grandsons, 8 year old Walter, just around the corner from his home that sits by the Caboolture River and Moreton Bay. Walter is the namesake of my fraternal grandfather – Walter James Breen – and was named by his parents with no knowlege of my grandfather who died in 1951. I arrived on the scene in 1950.

The hour or two around rather polluted water ways and beautiul grasses with Walter let me into his world and the unusual grassland marsh area. How high does the tide rise and are the grasses a sea grass that feed off salt water were left unanswered. I found the architectual form mesmerising. Muddy dark spaces and the occassional suspended crab and fish skeletons added to the mystique. Over the next couple of days I responded with a graphite drawing and two lino-cut prints of the time with Walter. Satisfying.

The concept of wellbeing represents a proactive stance toward emotional heath. The wellbeing literature examines the elements which contribute to a happy, fulfilling life. It encourages us to look at how we can actively foster resilience and contentment in our lives. In Ryff’s Scales of Psychological Wellbeing, Carol Ryff states wellbeing can be described through a number of components. These components are listed below. For each area, consider: “What does this mean day to day?””How much am I ‘doing’ it in my life, today?””How could I increase that tomorrow?”  Self-acceptance A positive attitude toward your self; acknowledging and accepting multiple aspects of self; feeling positive about your past life. Being able to say, “When I look at the story of my life, I am pleased with how things have turned out so far”. “When I look at how I handled today, can I say, ‘I did my best with that. I feel OK about how I went'”. Personal growth Feelings of continued development and potential and being open to new experiences; feeling increasingly knowledgeable and effective. Being able to say; “for me, life has been a continuous process of learning, changing, and growth.” “How did I learn and change today? What was I open to?” Purpose in life Having goals and a sense of direction in life; feeling that both present and past experiences are meaningful; holding beliefs that give purpose to life. Being able to say; “some people wander aimlessly through life; I am not one of them.” “What goal did I set myself and achieve today?” Environmental mastery Feeling competent and able to manage a complex environment; choosing or creating personally suitable contexts. Being able to say; “I am good at managing the responsibilities of daily life.” “How did I manage the practicalities of getting through today. What did I do well in there?” Autonomy Being self-determining, independent, and regulating your behaviour internally; resisting social pressures to think and act in certain ways; evaluating yourself by personal standards. Being able to say; “I have confidence in my own opinions, even if they are different from the way most other people think.” “What did I do or say today that expressed my opinion or belief?” Positive relations with others Having warm, satisfying, trusting relationships; being concerned about others’ welfare; being capable of strong empathy, affection, and intimacy; understanding give-and-take of human relationships. Being able to say; “People would describe me as a giving person, willing to share my time with others.” “What gesture did I make today toward another person, that showed my ability to care?”

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One of 25 original drawings for “I want to tell you” for #45 Body & Soul Berlin Artist Magazine 2025 Artist: Peter Breen. Media: Ink, graphite, guache on encylopedia page on paper

Used with permission

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Two impacts – Live theatre and a visual art installation.

The impact of real time “hard copy” art in public galleries/museums and live theatre that are not on screens as memories cannot be overstated. They will be ignored to our peril and need to be overstated. I feel more emboldened and in new spaces since experiencing “So Many Splintered Parts” and “I have loved/I love/I will love”. Artists are essential to life, recovery and the endless rebirth of universal values that will feed the evolution of robust “good” societies.

Photo taken by Peter Breen at Art Gallery of Queensland, August 31, 2025.

So Many Splintered Parts is a 7 act play performed by two young actors at Queensland Theatre’s South Brisbane Montague Road centre. It is a story of and for the evolution of understanding our times. Written by 7 different playwrights around their commission, it flowed with a mininalist set and live music by composer and well known Brisbane musician/performer Tyrone Noonan. [ Seen August 23, 2025]

“What do you see when you look out at the world? What does the world see when it looks back at us? This is the provocation we put to the seven writers we approached to be part of the project. What they delivered in response is a collection written for now, a gathering that tackles themes of identity, survival, digital culture, class and wealth, mental illness, violence and war – the fractures running through contemporary Australia and the world.” [ From the hand out guide].

It is not lost on me that a young world is asking such questions and commissioning such public inquiries. Outside of intelligent and on task academia, art is where such inquiries are best commissioned and made. Academia has – one would hope in this day of user pays tertiary education – a flow on effect but the arts in the broadest sense, unfettered and without limits or censorship and as public events and experiences, are the classrooms, pulpits and mills where the grist is cast in. Screen online desensitised endorphin overloads excite, shock or provoke click bait buyer regret but never the depth required for change. The change needed is long and evolutionary and as Viktor Frankl says so cogently

I have loved, I love, I will love is Pat Hoffie’s latest installation at the Art Gallery of Queensland. Pat is a Brisbane based artist, educator and author and though now retired from Queensland College of Art and Design [QCAD] has just embarked on a new art making project ending with this remarkable work. Undertaking printmaking at the invitation of master print maker and academic Dr Tim Mosely in 2024, Pat – primarily a painter* – found herself leaving aside her first ideas of what to print replaced by the impact of the endless stories via social and other media around Palestine, Ukraine and more.

“I wanted to slow some of these images down. To decelerate them. To termporarily detain them. Though each of them shocked and sickened me, I could all-too-easily-instantly forget them. And yet, it occurred to me, I had never been able to un-see a Goya.” [ From the forward of her 2025 self-published book “I have loved, I love, I will love”]

The exhibition of a selection of massive digitised prints from the prints she made as she referenced Goya and Kollwitz plus the huge installation of ladders, mirrors and detritus created for me a post crucifixion moment. Shadows of figures abusing, killing, dying are not newstories to repost or return to or save. The work made and curated is brilliant, a screaming silence that evokes almost a prostrate response and a return visit. Silence slipped in unannounced in my moments in the space, calling me to return.

This and the theatre say at least that art might not bring immediate change to the world but it asks the questions and opens doors to the silence where mystery dwells for those who have ears to hear and eyes to see beyond screen time.

Peter Breen. Brisbane. September 3, 2025.

Artist : Peter Breen

Mixed media on 2 x Encyclopedia Pages

*Pat Hoffie’s artistic practice has extended through exhibitions, collaborative cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural undertakings, publishing, education and advocacy since the 1970s. Trained as a painter, she also works with sculpture, installation, print media, drawing and video. Core to all areas of her practice is an examination of power, value, the importance of ‘place’ and the necessity of cultural diversity. In the 1980s and 90s, Hoffie’s interest in feminism’s critique of power and privilege contributed to a range of exhibitions, projects and publications that attracted national recognition. Her advocacy and support for women artists continues to the present through her writing, curating and commitment to projects in Australia and abroad. Since 1993, the artist has maintained a research focus on the inequities and inconsistencies of global cultural exchange through iterations of her ongoing ‘Fully Exploited Labour’ series. Informed by postcolonial analysis, her work has involved her first-hand participation in experimental practices across the region, where she has initiated and participated in a range of international projects and residencies. She has been described as “a leading figure in establishing cross-cultural dialogue with artists, collectives and colleges in the region”, and has been recognised for her contributions to the arts in Australia (AM) and for her contributions to tertiary scholarship in the visual arts (Professor Emeritus). Her artwork has been included in leading exhibitions, collections, and events in Australia and overseas.

Hoffie’s recent works reflect the deep scars of chaos and trauma that have become part of our everyday socially mediated world. Both personal as well as political, they are funny and tragic, idiosyncratic yet bound to the historical traditions of the ‘epic’.

​www.pat-hoffie.com

“I WANT TO TELL YOU”

These 25 works* are my mark making response to I want to tell you, the theme for the second bi-annual Body and Soul Magazine #45 , Berlin for 2025. The invitation to join this project came out of the blue via my Instagram account on_being_isolated and the artist Olesya Dzhurayeva [and publisher Hendrik Liersch] a remarkable lino cut/relief artist and collaborating designer of the magazine. The brief is to create a body of work – 25 original signed A4 pages around the given theme with a 3 cm left side border. Random selected pages from the approximate 20 invited artists will be bound into 25 page books by the publisher of Body and Soul Magazine Berlin and one of these will become each artist’s surprise gift in exchange. Some works and books will be kept to offset the publishers costs. The magazine was founded by the late Schoko Casana Rosso in 2005 while Hendrik Liersch picked up the project as publisher and has continued it into 45 editions. It is an inspiring mark making and international community project that I am excioted to be a part of. I’ve been drawn into this – pun intended – working and re-working and adjusting, following heart and hand since early in 2025.

The weight of I want to tell you is more than it would be in a world that only has the right coffee mix and muffin recipe. This body of work became a poem of introspection and despair added to an attempt to take one of the weights/waits of the world in 2025 – climate change and the 2019 Australian bush fires – and put down marks that respond viscerally at least to that elephant in the room.

As with my 2020 All the bees are [not] dying body of work, I hold that life is a constant and emerges against all odds. Resurrection is always possible. Always. When and how is beyond my very limited clarivouyant or exegetical skills and gifts but I am convinced of the reality of life being the being of all, in all and through all. To delcare and fight for this life to be better and healthier and pristine and beautiful is always right while now it seems to be overwhlemingly hopeless.

While ever a bee or a bacteria or a leaf or blackened tree stump carry life then this is what I want to tell you.

Life always will be.

Peter Breen. June 18, 2025.

*Graphite, ink, charcoal, red pencil, guache, water colour, collage, glue, relief print, monotype, found encyclopedia pages, Daiso Japanese calligraphy paper, anko acid free paper [160gsm]

FOR COLLECTORS.

WORKS FOR SALE.

Prints of # 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9, 22, 23, 25 will be available after June 30.

Each work will be printed on A4 [ 21 x 29.7cm] gsm Hahnamule photo rag paper. The 3cm left hand book binding space will be removed and each work will have an approx 2-5 mm border around the whole perimeter. [ Prints by Martin Barry at Brisbane Digital Imaging]

$80 each + Post

If you are interested in any of the other non-printed works, I am happy to work up new original duplicates. Prices on application.

Please contact pbreen22@outlook.com

Thankyou in anticipation.

ALSO

Art.Love.Spirituality.Oneness

In a world full of uncertainties, it’s easy to become anxious, depressed and experience feelings of hopelessness.  But it doesn’t have to be that way.  How we explain what happens to ourselves may matter just as much as what actually happens. This simple yet powerful framework sheds light on why some people are able to bounce back from setbacks while others struggle. Two broad explanatory styles include optimistic and pessimistic. These styles are based on how individuals interpret negative events across three dimensions:  Permanence – Is the cause temporary or permanent? Optimists see setbacks as temporary (“I didn’t do well on this project, but I can improve.”).Pessimists see them as lasting (“I always mess things up.”). Pervasiveness – Does the event affect all areas of life or just one? Optimists compartmentalise (“I failed at this task, but I’m still good at others.”).Pessimists generalise (“This failure proves I’m completely incompetent.”). Personalisation – Who is responsible? Optimists see external or specific causes (“The timing was bad.”).Pessimists blame themselves (“It’s all my fault.”). Optimism and Resilience The link between an optimistic explanatory style and resilience is profound. Optimists tend to recover faster from failure, manage stress more effectively, and maintain better emotional health. This resilience stems from their belief that adversity is not permanent, not all-encompassing, and not necessarily a personal flaw. Developing an Optimistic Outlook is Possible There is no need to be discouraged if you think you have more of a pessimistic explanatory style.  Research shows that explanatory style can be learned. By consciously challenging pessimistic thoughts and reframing how we interpret setbacks, we can foster a more optimistic outlook—building mental strength, motivation and resilience in the process. Here are 3 ways to actively develop a more positive mindset:  The “ABCDE” technique helps reframe pessimistic thinking: Adversity – What happened? Belief – What did you believe about it? Consequence – What was the outcome (emotion/behaviour)? Disputation – What evidence contradicts the belief? Energisation – How do you feel after disputing the belief?Reflecting on past experiences of resilience can also help develop a positive outlook. Recall times you overcame challenges. Ask yourself: What helped me cope?What did I learn?How did my thinking influence my response?Taking it a step further, and documenting these can more powerfully remind you of your capacity to bounce back and foster a more positive explanatory lens. Observe positive people around you Your environment matters. Engage with people who support constructive thinking and model optimistic behaviour. Notice how they interpret setbacks and emulate their language and mindset.

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This book is unique because the story is.

You can support the publishing and distribution of this book with a donation towards our writing, editing, printing and publishing of the Jugglers story via GoFundMe . The writing process I am now in is, in colloquial terms, a trip down memory lane. But it is more than that. The re-connection to people and events, donations and conversations do, if nothing else, strongly reinforce the idea that long term committment to other people’s development, growth, affirmation, training, with warmth and welcome are fruitful regardless of their social situation or talent.

https://gofund.me/ed5a7f6f

Keep a look out for the book at the end of 2025

Peter Breen

Co-founder, Jugglers Art Space Inc

Founder, The Stairwell Project

http://www.jugglersartspace.com.au

This book is unique because the story is.

You can support the publishing and distribution of this book with a donation towards our writing, editing, printing and publishing of the Jugglers story via GoFundMe . The writing process I am now in is, in colloquial terms, a trip down memory lane. But it is more than that. The re-connection to people and events, donations and conversations do, if nothing else, strongly reinforce the idea that long term committment to other people’s development, growth, affirmation, training, with warmth and welcome are fruitful regardless of their social situation or talent.

https://gofund.me/ed5a7f6f

Keep a look out for the book at the end of 2025

Peter Breen

Co-founder, Jugglers Art Space Inc

Founder, The Stairwell Project

http://www.jugglersartspace.com.au