An exhibition with John Pratt at Belconnen Arts Centre in February 2024, the outcome of three years phone conversations and postcard dialogues mostly at a distance of 1100 kilometres between Darkinjung and Ngunnawal country. We engaged with a particular zone of the environment between Gulaga and the ocean on the rugged south coast of NSW in Yuin country. We used this focus as a means of developing a visual narrative that deals with distance, space, time, tides, and atmosphere.
Some thoughts:
- The apparent dissolution of solidity that can occur so often in the liminal zone between land and ocean
- The everpresent solidity of Gulaga as a touchstone from so many vantage points
- The fracturing and shifting that is evident in the metamorphosed and upended structures of the coastal lithology
The geological narrative of the NSW south coast reverberates with a multilayered and complex cultural history as well as suggesting our contemporary acknowledgement and requirement to consider the human induced environment and climate change that has occurred over such a short period of time.
Both bodies of work can be characterised as exploring a space between solidity and the void. The works offer interesting contrasts between consolidation and dissolution, drawn and photographic, delineated and implied, solid and airy.