it's hard to report a stolen bike, stolen.

The Budgie Died Instantly and It’s Hard to Report a Stolen Bike, Stolen. form two interconnected chapters in an ongoing body of work that happened over roughly two years in the same location.

It’s work that initially emerged from lived experience and childhood memories. But then, through a series of chance encounters, became an exploration of friendship, conflict, humour and humanity. It looks at relationships, acceptance and trust within a closely self-guarded community — an island that sits above the city at the top of a hill, where utopian desires exist in windows decorated with flowers and pride fronting forbidden spaces behind closed doors that hang full of lost innocence and diminishing dreams.

Kept within a cycle of deprivation — not necessarily of wealth, but of information and alternative realities — this is an intimate, visceral portrait of people whose lives are caught in oscillation between incarceration and freedom.

The intimacy of these images offers insight to the conflict of possibility and reality, and the elusive moments of hope that lie in between. Nostalgic recollections and anecdotes of chaotic incidents interweave with alarming hilarity. A mirror on life’s complexities and the inherent need to survive at all costs in pursuit of belonging and love, this work reveals a community marred by enforced social marginalisation and outrage, where resilience and behavioural patterns remain unbroken against an assault of ill-considered mental-health care, trauma and lack of long-term systematic change.

Mutual trust and understanding are critical to sharing these moments in their lives. Standing on the sidelines is not an option.