At the Sea’s Edge | Resurrection cycles

This two-part program features conversations and workshops reflecting on life and death, grief and activism, community and care.

Each event provides an opportunity to hear from invited community members who will share their research and lived experiences in an open conversation. This will be followed by a guided workshop to encourage collective participation in the spirit of remembrance, creativity, celebration, and resistance.

Resurrection cycles

Hear from Benjamin Riley in conversation with Geraldine Fela, Emma Kirby, and Victoria Spence as they share community reflections and approaches for growing, tending, and nurturing conditions for living and dying well. Geraldine Fela shares research about nurses and frontline workers during the height of Australia’s AIDS crisis, and Emma Kirby discusses the relational and social needs of end-of-life care. Following these discussions, Life Rites founder Victoria Spence leads a workshop on creating ‘kit bags’ to navigate legal, funeral, and community systems that can help us live and die well.

In an interview at Prospect Cottage, Derek Jarman reflected, “Gardening is central because when gardening, one is entering into another time, into eternal returns and cycles. Those are the resurrection cycles in my life.” 

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‘At the Sea’s Edge’ is presented in conjunction with ‘Derek Jarman: Delphinium Days’ at UNSW Galleries from 14 February – 4 May 2025.

The program takes inspiration from Derek Jarman’s Garden (1995) – a collection of diary entries and poems reflecting his sense of mortality and living on borrowed time. They were printed alongside photographs of his evolving garden at Dungeness, flourishing despite its harsh environment. For Jarman, gardening nourished him throughout his life; the garden was an “anchor” and a site where the edges of grief and loss met resilience and joy:

Here at the sea’s edge I have planted my dragon-toothed garden to defend the porch,  steadfast warriors against those who protest their impropriety even to the end of the world.  A fathomless lethargy has swallowed me,  great waves of doubt broken me,  all my thoughts washed away.  The storms have blown salt tears,  burning my garden,  Gethsemane and Eden. 

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Image: Derek Jarman, The Garden 1990. Image courtesy: Basilisk Communications