Art – Nature – Wellbeing is a diverse collection of art created by staff and students of the Master of Art Therapy at the University of Western Sydney (UWS) examining the interdependence of human and ecological systems, and the relationship between creativity, wellbeing and the natural world.

The exhibition consists of works from various disciplines, including painting, drawing, textiles, sculpture, installation, film and digital media – in addition to live performance pieces on opening night.

Suzanne Perry and Jill Westwood
Collaborative Film – Magical Thinking

This film explores the story of the orphaned girls sent far away from anything they had ever known. The ship arrives and they are left alone wondering if they are deeply bad and unlovable. They arrive with each other and their shared internal worlds of abject pain. It is the truthfulness of the landscape that becomes their secure base, a place that cradles their magical thinking while they attend to the seriousness of play; giving expression to their suffering and hope through the alchemy of dirt, seaweed, ocean minerals, and river beds.
In this film we have made a site specific work on the NSW south coast in an area where the mouth of the river and ocean merge. We came as strange and uncomfortable ghost girl visitors to this location and began to play, engaging in a state of ‘magical thinking’. This is stage of processing of thoughts and actions often expressed in play that is used by children regularly to gain a sense of control over events that are uncontrollable, and often in response to grief. It is also a state that adults and older children return to in times of distress. In many cultures, rituals, folklores and spells allow and respect the process and enactment of magical thinking and through this connect with different world orders in nature from the underworld to the spirit world.

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/11100