lilwoolworths

I've been missing from my blog for a while so here's an update!

Now that I am no longer a University student (I graduated yay), this blog is going to take on a much more casual tone.

I've thrust myself into the music scene in Sydney and have been creating artworks for undisclosed events -- mostly projection art and draped paintings.

I'm also in this dj competition called Your Shot, learning how to mix in 30 days and performing at the end of May!!!

Plant Therapy

I remember back in high school — in a bid to make myself feel better about my mental health — I downloaded an app on my iPhone 11. This app was one of those mood trackers that, according to some, were somehow meant to fix the overarching cause of mental illness: screen time.

Unfortunately for my plant, I was addicted to my phone. My digital responsibility — my little pixelated plant — absorbed all my unhealthy habits: scrolling endlessly through surgeons’ Instagrams, trolling red-pill men in the comments, comparing my body to micro-influencers, and saving clothes that would never suit me when I inevitably bought them. This technological neglect resulted in a brutal animation loop of falling leaves and a withering plant.

It haunts me to this day.

In honour of that plant’s mistreatment and horrific digital life, I have been treating houseplants for free through the Flora Therapy Clinic — a facility dedicated to the rehabilitation of depressed plants.

If you would like to learn more about therapizing your plants, please DM me.

Thinking on Old Tech

Five years ago, I was at a party in Vaucluse — a Sydney gathering with all the new people I’d met in college. It was the first time we’d seen each other since our college had been shut down due to COVID, so it was a moment of celebration. Parties have always been a bit of hit or miss since I’ve never been able to handle my drink. I’m unsure if it’s an allergy or an intolerance, but when Jimmy Briggs arrived at this McMansion with my pink gin in hand, I knew my night would be short-lived.

My memory of the party is fuzzy. I remember trying a vape for the first time and immediately throwing up (I’d never had nicotine before). I do remember however, waking up on my bathroom floor. My clothes were wet, the tiles were stained orange with bile, and my phone was missing.

In my tragic state, I tried to get in contact with Uber, but my driver was holding my phone hostage — he wanted $300. I don’t give in to the demands of people I deem morally corrupt — out of principle — so I resigned myself to losing my iPhone 11 and bought a flip phone to tide me over until I could afford a new one.

This flip phone — purchased from Macquarie Officeworks — along with a prepaid SIM, ended up saving me from falling into insanity. With COVID-19 lockdowns being imposed and lifted so sporadically, I’d been unconsciously yo-yoing between manic and depressed, mirroring the global updates I was receiving online through my phone.

One drunken night had brought about a much-needed silence in my life. My destructive dopamine cycle had been replaced with a steady flow; disconnecting was exactly what I needed in that period.

Only equipped with my ‘dumb’ phone, I had to actively reach out to my friends and parents. DMs became hour-long calls — it’s hard to ignore someone when you don’t know how to turn the ringer off on an old piece of tech. When I went out with this barbaric device, I became a talking point, even a party trick.

“Oh my God, Luckk, show ___ your phone!”

I’d whip out the Nokia and flamboyantly flip the screen open, sparking laughter and stories from others about their memories of life before the iPhone. This wasn’t my first flip phone, however.

At the age of five, I was given an original Motorola W375 2G GSM flip phone. The circumstances that led to me owning such a flashy orange phone stemmed from a mishap on my first attempt to get myself to school without my parents. My sister and I got lost in Circular Quay, which was enough for my parents to purchase a means of communication in case of emergency — why they chose me rather than my sister, who was three years older, still confuses me.

That phone changed my little life. Motorola gave me a sense of identity, a new way to play, and a cool factor I’d never known. This was the dawn of a new age — I was a five-year-old with a mobile! And not just any mobile, but the peak of communication technology (at the time). I would document everything through its terrible camera. Selfies, landscapes, and amateur investigations were some of my finest work.

The images were so pixelated and crunchy, but so were all photos taken in 2006. Now, in 2020, with only a flip phone to my name, I was re-engaging with a mode of play I’d forgotten. The accessibility and ease of photographing with my iPhone had taken away the labour of love.

Once again, I was capturing everything. Every photo — no matter how grainy, badly lit, or out of focus — became a statement, a yearning for simple technology, fun technology, tech that could make you laugh and cry, sometimes in the same day. I would spend hours transferring these photos to my computer, watching the exports fail repeatedly, but this act of waiting brought me anticipation and excitement. I experienced the height of online connectivity and user engagement — a global pandemic— through a flip phone. I got to experience it through a nostalgic lens; I remember it through the eyes of my five-year-old self — flip phone in hand.

Framing Devices #007

I remember the first time I saw a “sex toy” — in actuality, it was a sex-adjacent object — I was 10 years old rifling through the drawers of my mother's bedside table when I found a set of black-sequinned heart-shaped nipple tassels.

I immediately stopped searching for whatever it was that I was looking for and took them to my mother. I lifted my hands to her eyes, baring the treasure gently on my palms, and asked, “What are these for?” My mother, being the sex positive person I know her (now) to be, responded simply, “Those are nipple covers, my friend”

Why would you want to cover your nipples with these? They seem impractical. Wouldn’t a bra be easier? Does my mum just wear these sometimes so she can be topless?

These were the immediate thoughts that came to my mind, but eventually I retorted with one question, “Is this for sex?” “Yes, my dear, your dad likes them”, she followed this by poking out her tongue. “Eughhh” was the only thing that came out of my mouth before I ran back to her room to put them away.

She still owns them to this day, and upon reflection, I can confidently say she has great taste in nipple covers.

Since then, I have had the pleasure (pun intended) of administering pulsing vibrations to partners, having sex toys presented to me by others, and enjoying the pinnacle of human engineering upon myself.

I bought my first vibrator when I was 18. My boyfriend at the time said it could be fun, and it was with him, but I couldn’t even approach this bright pink silicone bullet. The first time I turned it on, I was mortified by how loud this tiny machine was. Every time I attempted to get off, I was paralysed with the fear of being caught. To my ears, this device sounded like a monstrous construction site. Jack Hammers, Saws, and drills — a symphony of men at work — not the subtle wank I was hoping for.

I threw it out, placing it deep in my family trash can — underneath a heap of food waste — so that no one would know that I, Luckk Parker, was now a sex pest.

When I moved to college, suddenly everyone around me was talking about sex; it was all-consuming to these fresh high school graduates. Somehow, amid all these conversations around sex, I had become a wise old crone. I was taking my newfound friends to their first sex shop and guiding them on which products would suit their particular needs — I was the most knowledgeable person when it came to getting off with a partner (having a long-term boyfriend granted me such a title).

I would receive text messages telling me, “So I tried that thing we were talking about and it actually worked!” Even though I wasn’t getting any — being in an exclusive long distance relationship fml — I was helping my girlfriends reach their first O.

I think this was when the shame I had built around sex started to fade into obscurity.

Framing Devices #003

It’s 5:00 am … no, 5:03 am, depending on whether you trust the DVD player clock or the VHS player clock more. I’m at Paris’ house, and I’ve been woken up by a few stimuli:

The magpies, celebrating their harvest

The static emanating from Paris’ boxy TV — still paused from last night

The foul stench of stale French fries (my mum never let our family have fast food)

Ruby’s snoring carrying across the room — such a powerful sound for someone so small

And my own fear that this slumber party was about to end.

I’m careful not to cause too much disturbance. I don’t want to be the weird girl who wakes up before the sun, or the annoying girl who wakes everyone else up before they’re ready. Perpetually anxious, and forever fearing my social demise.

So I just wait there — perched on this trundle bed — staring at this clunky tech, occasionally catching my reflection between TV flickers and waves of visual static, wondering:

Why did I have to be the first one awake?

Was I acting weird last night?

And will I make the cut when invitations go out for the next sleepover?

Framing devices #006

I always found myself in my brother's room during my youth. Even though we were close in age—only nine months apart—he had somehow amassed three times the amount of stuff I owned in such a short period of time. It shouldn’t have surprised me. Looking back, I can clearly see that my brother was quite the entrepreneur. He had a talent for trade, convincing just about anyone on the playground to hand over their most prized possessions in exchange for little to nothing.

Nintendo games, Pokémon cards, Power Rangers merch, crystals, hand-me-down relics inherited from our older cousins, and an apparent freedom to decorate his room however he pleased—these were the things that captivated me. An incredible feat.

He was the best playmate I had as a child: generous, imaginative, and energetic. He could always be found either tinkering with his Lego designs or dressed up as Captain Jack Sparrow (or Luke Skywalker), fighting battles invisible to me but always emerging victorious.

But the thing about having so many cool things in your room—and being able to create such vivid worlds within it—is that you can fall into the trap of never wanting to leave. From the ages of 10 to 17, my brother locked himself away, emerging only as someone almost unrecognisable from the boy I once knew.

My sweet brother had changed. He was taller, hairier, jaded, and quiet. His smile was weaker. The shoulders that once jumped ferociously when he laughed were now still—unmoved by any attempt to jest.

We’re both much older now. We’ve both left our rooms for good—only returning to sleep. I’m in the process of reacquainting myself with him. I hope to be his playmate once again.

This digital collage is my attempt to remember the clutter that first drew my attention—and kept me entertained for years.

Why am I back here?

It’s period one of my first ever high school class—Ms. Simpson’s English—and I’m sitting next to a girl boasting about her 8,000 followers on Tumblr. Until that moment, I had been steadily avoiding Tumblr on the advice of my older sister’s friends, who warned me about the explicit content, mature themes, and the neerdowells that inhabited the site. As a 12-year-old attending an all-girls Catholic school—quietly grappling with my non-hetero sexuality and burgeoning atheistic tendencies—I believed I had enough to deal with without adding Tumblr to the mix.

Looking back now, at 24, I’m still unsure what it was about this girl’s tone (or her outright belief that her Tumblr status elevated her above the rest of us) that compelled me to create my first account. But in that moment, I felt challenged. I wanted to outdo her. This was the beginning of my undoing.

The account I created, which no longer belongs to me (I eventually sold it at its peak), was called “kawaiiinpink.” It was dedicated entirely to all things pink and aesthetically pleasing. I taught myself HTML just to design a blog that would be undeniably superior to her Lana-coded sad-girl page. As I gained followers and ventured deeper into the underbelly of Tumblr, I was exposed to some of the internet’s filth: Ana propaganda, self-harm confessions, hardcore porn, and diary entries that should never have been made public—content fed to me daily through the explore page. It slowly distorted my young mind and my sense of self.

Two months in, I began binge eating. I had convinced myself I would never look like Alexa Chung, so I punished myself through a cycle of bingeing and yo-yo dieting, eventually gaining 10 kilograms in the span of a year—a shameful, self-fulfilling prophecy. As my belly grew, so did my online presence. “kawaiiinpink” reached 50,000 followers, and the direct messages became increasingly depraved. I spent hours reading requests to show my “pink bits,” reacting to strangers asking me to rate their naked bodies, and fighting off bots trying to purchase my account. Tumblr had become my primary media diet, yet the only place I could indulge in it was the privacy of my bedroom. Even though no one was forcing me to stay there, I came to associate Tumblr with a kind of guilty pleasure—a secret that had to be hidden. That period lasted two and a half years.

Now, as an adult reflecting on the bedroom through the lens of academic art practice, I can confidently name Tumblr as a critical puzzle piece in the development of my work. It was the first space where I encountered confession, shame, and the raw broadcasting of one’s unfiltered self to an anonymous audience; one that could respond without consequence. Returning to Tumblr, as a platform shaped by radical transparency and rampant free thought, feels like a natural extension of my current research into the bedroom as a site of meditation, growth, and connection. Tumblr’s architecture (anonymous, image-heavy, and archive-driven) mirrors the emotional interiority of the bedroom: private yet performative, intimate yet intrinsically linked to broader cultural rhythms. Just as the bedroom is a space to retreat, unravel, fantasise, and rebuild, Tumblr once offered me a similarly liminal zone; where shame, longing, obsession, and self-reflection could be publicly rehearsed. Its legacy as a confessional space for youth in crisis aligns seamlessly with my desire to excavate the psychic residue embedded in domestic environments. By returning to the platform, I aim to reactivate a former mode of expression—part digital reliquary, part emotional outburst—where the bedroom is not merely represented but embodied through scrolling, curating, and posting as acts of self-meditation.

BREATH WORK

Ever since I started going out and allowing myself the space to become the club rat I know myself to be — in my heart of hearts — I’ve grown strangely fond of club bathrooms. And it’s not for the compliments from wasted or heartbroken girls, or the invitations to partake in substances from charming strangers — although I love both.

No, my fondness comes from the curatorship that occurs on the walls, the toilet seats, and the flimsy doors of said club bathrooms.

Poopin’ poets lay out the most devastatingly beautiful sonnets in permanent marker during their moment of rest, only to forget they ever wrote such a thing when they return the following weekend. Love notes, stickers, call-outs, and numbers promising a “good time” — all assembled in a visual heap, barely illuminated in these dingy loos — captivate me and calm me when I’m on the brink of losing myself.

Too many drinks, a mystery powder, seeing my ex–best friend — any of these things could’ve brought me to this stall. But the fodder left behind by other club-goers re-centers me, grounds me, and reminds me that they, too, sought sanctuary here. The word “VACANT” plastered on the lock lets me know they made it out of this club. I’m going to be fine.

Sometimes, I find myself in the bathroom just to catch my breath. The smoking has taken a toll on my lungs — but I won’t quit. Socialising in Narrm is much easier with a cigarette.

When I start to dance, I’m back in my bedroom. I’m floating from one place to another — guided by free-flowing movement and zero inhibitions. The speakers may be saying one thing, but all I can hear is my own playlist — my favourite songs — serendipitously matching the BPM of the local DJ’s set.

Framing Devices #002