Walking at Weereewa

Abstract

In Australia, over the past thirty years or so, there has been a change in the way non-Indigenous visual artists have interpreted the nation’s landscape. During this period a cultural shift has occurred, from one where the term ‘landscape’ refers to a view from a fixed point in time, as in the European landscape tradition, to a broader awareness where the landscape is interpreted in terms of its memory, history, mythology, as well as its physical features. This change in perception has its origins in a deeper understanding of the Australian landscape; one that has been promoted both through the works of Indigenous artists and by a broader desire amongst their non-Indigenous colleagues to experience this unique environment as a composite of all its elements rather than just a visual scene to be captured by the artist’s brush. To help me understand and articulate these changes I have drawn upon both phenomenology and cross-cultural mapping. Phenomenology is a philosophical concept describing our interactions with, and our reactions to, the phenomena that comprise everyday life. In my research I walked extensively on the lake bed of Weereewa (Lake George) at different times of the year, experiencing the whole environment, from the sky above to the tiniest crack in the mud, using all my physical senses while being constantly aware of the Aboriginal history on this lake bed that preceded me, and any other European presence, by thousands of years. I became embedded within the whole landscape; truly able to experience its many facets through my senses. This is the essence of phenomenology. Cross-cultural mapping, on the other hand, describes the way people of different cultures record their memories of a place. It asks the question, how have they mapped the land around them and for what purposes? In my research I looked at how both Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists have gone about the process of mapping the land, and it is from these findings, in combination with my own experiences on the lake that much of my studio work has developed. My studio work consists of cut-outs and drawings that reflect the physical and temporal phenomena of the Weeweera landscape: its clouds, shadows, changing colours, remnant water, cultural relics, land-use practices and the impacts of both weather and time on its human and geological histories. My experiences of the lake are represented as a series of ‘fragments’ that engage with its different histories: the Aboriginal, the settler and the geological. In developing these fragments into wall installations and watercolour works on paper, using a process I called an ecology of drawing, I have been able to bring together all the influences on my work, enabling me to express my experiences of the lake in a new visual language.