2005 | Sight Analysis
Fremantle Arts Centre
Sight Analysis reflects my personal response to the environment and history of the Menzies area after visiting the Anthony Gormley, Lake Ballard installation. As an exhibition it indicates a change from past work which was highly critical of colonial presence. It is a commentary directed by a growing awareness of the complexity of our history and can be viewed as a Site Analysis, that is ...a method for layering biophysical and cultural information about a given place.
The journey to this area of historic mining settlements, now existing as no more than shards and scraps of lives once lived in the harshest of environments, gave me a broader context in which to locate the colonisers, in particular the women.
The inclusion of the two Lake Ballard Landscapes in this exhibition symbolises the change in my personal dialogue with history. They represent looking forward and back in both a physical and symbolic sense. The paintings depict the feeling experienced when standing on the Lake Ballard shore, of looking ahead while being aware of the enormity of the landscape behind.
The work utilises found objects, chosen as signifiers from an era and place, as well as encaustic, soil, oil paint and text from colonial diaries to give focus and context. The layering of these vestiges and traces creates an interstice from which to re present re collections of our shared past.
