These are images from my current exhibition at the Wagga Wagga Art Gallery down on the beautiful Murrumbigee River. Ive been making aerial photographs of the patterns made by native vegetation out on the Darling. So ... Ive been flying large kites with cameras attached. Yes ... its a good excuse to run about in the beautiful landscape out there! Out in this open grazing country - no checkerboard of ploughed fields out here - topography, water and wind create beautiful organic shapes and colours. Cutting through these patterns are the straight lines (yes humans are fairly blunt creatures) of fences and roadways and the electric grid. These two patterns, the organic and the linear, appear to have little relationship to each other.
This work is called Inland Sea and is a map-like pattern of the names of creeks and rivers which flow into the Darling. As i was pouring over maps i noticed that many have Aboriginal names and here, is an Aboriginal and colonialist history written into the landscape. The work suggests the flow of sustaining floodwaters across this vast semi-arid country. Baaka is the Bakindji word for the Darling.
In times when Queeensland rains come down the Cuttaburra channels and the Paroo, Warrego and Culgoa to the Darling a vast, expanse of water covers the country for miles in all directions. The explorer Charles Sturt fantasised about water of this dimension. An ardent ortholigist, he watched waterbirds setting off from Adelaide to the inland. He became obsessed with searching for these vast and unpredictable inland seas and continued to search the deserts of SA into his old age. (the link is to Sturts publication 'two expeditions into the interior of south australia')
No comments:
Post a Comment