Repeat After Me

Chapter 15

'Come to a quarantine party at the studio tonight? Awesome folk I want you to meet,' Asten messaged. I knew I should say no. It was wrong to sneak out again. It was wrong to go to a party when the country was in lockdown. It was wrong to go and meet a boy I had feelings for when he had a girlfriend. I knew it was all wrong. My gut was screaming 'no bloody way', yet I said, 'Sure, sounds great.'

I did my usual trick of climbing out the laundry window at midnight. I caught an Uber over to Richmond. The driver was kind and didn't ask what I was doing out.

When I arrived at the studio, the roller doors were up. It was in an industrial area, so not too many residential houses around. There were maybe twenty people in the studio, the music wasn't too loud, but I could hear heavy duty conversation. Asten came straight over and put his arm around me, 'Finally. I was starting to wonder if you were coming?'

'Here I am,' I said.

'I want you to meet some people. They're all doing the Abandoned Spaces show.' He introduced me to Milo, Percolator, Tobacco, Struggle and ET. Two of them had foreign accents. Before long, Asten announced 'you need to meet Pigmentation. You'll love her.'

He took me over to a woman in her late thirties or early forties. Her hair was dark brown and cropped, she was wearing jeans and a black hooded top. 'This is Ivy, the girl I was telling you about,' he said to the woman. 'This is Pigmentation. She recently did a project with a group of garbage picker kids in Manila in the Philippines. She was a corporate lawyer before and left her job to do street art with a social conscience.'

'What are garbage picker kids?' I asked.

'They live on dumpsites. Most of them are born there. They scavenge all day for rubbish they can sell or reuse,' she said.

'That's full on.'

'We helped them paint murals of what they like about their community on corrugated iron sheets that were then used for housing for their families. The conditions are appalling; no fresh water, no sewerage system, no electricity. They're literally living on a pile of garbage. The houses are thrown together with bits of found junk. Yet, there's a feeling of community and belonging. So we wanted to focus on the positives and celebrate what was good about their community.'

'That sounds amazing,' I said.

'I found one boy playing with a huntsman spider for entertainment once. It was his pet.' I was struck with this image of the boy with his huntsman spider. 'I saw your work in the UUS,' Pigmentation said to me. 'I like your style. It's painterly, if you know what I mean. I like it.' I was too flattered to speak.

'Want a drink?' Asten asked.

'Sure,' I said.

'Gin?' I nodded. Asten walked off, leaving me with Pigmentation.

'Are you still in school?' she asked.

'Yeah.'

'How's the remote learning going?'

'Up and down. I was really motivated at first. It was a bit of a novelty. But it's hard to keep up the momentum.'

'Year 12?'

'Year 11.'

'Lucky. You should hopefully have a more normal year next year. Fingers crossed. But who knows.'

'How about you? Are you working from home?'

'I'm in the studio, so it's okay, I'm on my own anyway. I've been doing isolation for a while. It's the only way to get any work done.' She unrolled the sleeve of her hooded top and then rolled it up again.