'The pepper tree is an ornamental, invasive tree from South America, but it can sometimes be found lining the sides of Melbourne roads. Transplanted across the Pacific, it's an oddly graceful tree: gnarled, twisted trunks made of splintery, rough grey bark; graceful, dark-green glossy and delicate leaves like fern fronds; fruit like bunches of peppercorns. Some use these pepperberries as substitutes for real peppercorns; the leaves are poisonous. The pepperberries take on hues of pink, green and yellow, literal "vowels" of light: absorbing some wavelengths, releasing others. The wavelengths the pigments reject-what we see as colour-form the language we use to describe the world. But the entire tree is transformed light: light captured, converted to wood, sugar, pepperberry, leaf; light made flesh, light made colour. The tree tells the story of the life of light, from the dawn of the universe to a petrified record of our star, the sun.' (Publication abstract)
