Varnish Online
A collection of written art, assembled piece by piece. This curated gallery holds a mix of mature and emerging talent, where the breadth of voices creates a harmonious exhibition.
Patrons are invited to engage not with a single work but the complete collection – one that exposes varying techniques, styles, and accounts.
27. Your Roots Are Showing
The fellowship of a table-tennis club in what Paul Roberson, my former guitar teacher and dear friend, recalls as a “colonial port city at the far flung edges of a dying empire”…
25. The Suicide
When Mira found out Liam had killed himself, she’d been crossing a Cambodian road to get to a temple…
23. Bitter Fruit
He charges into the water with bull-like force, his heavy thighs parting the waves, silver-haired chest open in defiance…
21. White Cabbage Butterflies, North Beach Wollongong
Up above the high tide line, soft shapeless sand slips in snake-like drifts under my feet…
20. Taking Up Space
On 15 February 2003, a month before I turned twenty-three, I attended the anti-war march in London, in opposition to the invasion of Iraq…
18. Paper Nails
In Budapest during my gap year I got a tattoo for you between my shoulder blades…
14. The Light Declines
The top half of Brendan’s body is hanging out of the car door as I emerge from the terminal with my obscenely large travel pack double-strapped to my body…
13. What’s Polish For: ‘The Price We Pay’?
You can never tell when she is serious, she skirts around truth, not with me but with him, her husband, whom she’s supposed to be closest to…
