Rot Doll Eulogy

On my last day. Last wake-up. My eyes are so wide. Like animal that stretch and yawn under floorboard. What small bed of gravel baby. To lay flat head across. I crawl. Breast on dirt. Breast out to cloud bruised sun. To hello sky.

Bundle of midges above fence. 1,000,000 body snag first light. Like mine. Bundle in shape of a girl.

When I little. Shhhhhhh shhh no cry. When I little. I run over olive stain pavement. Big crack full of pits. Maybe a pip run-away though. Roll over to dirt. Maybe grow tomorrow. Forget grow biggest tree. Most shade and feed.

When I little. When I little. When gravel bed be fresh soft. Termite visit me. He tell me of saliva home. Termite part hungry part kind. With each set sun he teach me patient. I think tomorrow I will visit warm mound busy with old friend. My throat get tight with tear. To think termite wait for me.

Another day I dream shout in sleep. I follow to neighbour paddock. Cry when see miss horse wonky leg. Cry when see her high up on broken shin. Brave neck to sky. I want give mine but she say no. She say I grateful still for view. Miss horse teach me grateful.

My best morning is to visit river. Love when it cut ground in two like sure scissor. I get down to mud on knee and still. If lucky can wear leech like anklet. Proud I be choose. But if choose move only when they fat at head. Otherwise they thirsty and leave blood hole. Heart full when they belly full.

Sometime. Sometime wish I fun more. So try play ground when head strong. Go round round merry go. Teddy come too. Sometime when body happy we spin off. Catch air like pod seed and hah. Teddy alway smile after metal plate. Alway smile.

Now forgot what play ground smell like. Teddy say I be ok. Now my body keep folding for vomit. I sick. I sorry teddy. Sharp bile collapse ground. Weight too much. Steaming. I kick over with dirt. The next day when I gone come a halo of ants. Feed from me like waterhole okay?

I go where sun go today. But when she go sleep to night my gravel bed will full with pile of bone. Bone in shape of girl.




Contextualising Statement


If you are squeamish, do not poke among the beach rubble. Sappho (Barnard, 1958)
Rot Doll (2025), comprises an experimental eulogy and funerary photo documentation. The piece collaborates with decay as an entropic, agential storyteller. Through finding character in cultural by-products, Rot Doll draws parallels between decay’s permutability and creative writing’s foundational concerns with process, authorship, and collaboration.
The visual and textual elements of the work function symbiotically to conceive alternative ways of understanding and acknowledging material change. Rot Doll’s self-authored eulogy asks: How much language is effacable while still sustaining narrative? Notably, Eimear McBride’s A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing (2013) inspires the partiality and corrosion of the text’s form. Thematically, the research and wisdom of Caitlin Desilvey were also of great inspiration. The project’s visual elements probe the Western world’s impulse to pasteurise death when material exists outside of ‘pleasing decay.’ Its sterile interventions in heritage conservation further this exploration through Rot Doll’s gallery-esque presentation.
Central to the project is an active resistance against the colonial fetishisation of the land as a passive, mnemonic receiver and archive. Rot Doll lives on only in documentation, continuing to decompose as the material of her body returns to rest.