Art project connects community in shared grief

When Newtown artist Melissa Laffy lost her brother to suicide eight years ago, she threw herself into her work – a refuge she returned to less than four years later, when she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

“How I process all the big stuff in my life is through art. It gets channelled through me, and I make these works that somehow allow for my understanding and my travelling through those huge things,” she said.

“It does something to your soul to be able to creatively express your grief and trauma out through your hands.”

Grief sits again at the centre of Laffy’s latest piece, a community art project exploring the relationship of fungi and its fine filament threads to the earth. It’s a network she says is as important to life and afterlife as is the supportive network of family, friends and community in the wake of devastating loss.

Individuals receiving support through not-for-profit organisation Hope Bereavement Care were invited to contribute to the artwork, using it as a vehicle themselves to build community, spark conversations, and extend their own roots.

“Like the mycelium networks, we all can work and make something beautiful that other people can look at and reflect on, and know that it’s about our loved ones, that their legacy is not forgotten,” Laffy said.

“We’re about awareness and we’re about being able to talk about mental health, out in the open with compete honesty – not watering it down, not pretending, just getting it out there.”

And as with nature, there is a wildness to the artwork’s final form, with participants encouraged to create without fear and lean into the power of the expression without being too invested in the outcome.

Pink, crocheted mushrooms, each representing a loved one that has been lost, litter what is a garden of recycled textiles. Laffy described its creation as “cathartic”.

This weekend the piece will be on display at the Geelong Regional Library and Heritage Centre, as part of The Art of Grieving, an exhibition featuring an array of works responding to loss.

An initiative of Hope Bereavement Care, the exhibition, held through National Grief Week, aims to give visitors the opportunity to reflect on their own experiences and ideas around grief.

“Grief is a universal human experience. It’s a normal, natural response to loss and it is something that will inevitably affect us all, at some point in our lives,” Hope’s Melinda Hopper said.

“Yet, what we know is that there is still much taboo surrounding grief. Our clients often tell us that societal norms of silence mean conversations about their loved one and their grief are often avoided.

“The aim of National Grief Week is to change this.

“Ultimately, we hope that visitors take away some hope – hope for a future where grief is more talked about, better understood and where we all feel better equipped to navigate it when the time comes.”

The Art of Grieving began on Saturday, August 16, and will run until August 28. For more information, head to events.grlc.vic.gov.au/events