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.
34. My Cousin’s First Cigarette
My cousin’s first cigarette is home in the hammock of speak-flesh…
33. Touching Distance
When they were younger, they used to stay at his family’s bach in Kaupokonui…
31. Seminyak
My iPhone had taken to reminding me of the last trip I took with my father and the week we spent in Bali…
29. Wrong Forecast
When I went to work that day, in the tavern next to the building, I heard several entities soaked in homemade liquor, which was doing well, unlike other branches of the economy; they were bitterly discussing current political events…
28. Trampolines and Boys with Broken Bones
When I was little – so little, in fact, that I couldn’t distinguish my parents’ angry voices from their excited ones – I used to watch the boy who lived in the house beside us bounce on his trampoline every afternoon…
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…
