Words For New Landscapes
Fabric sculptures, video projection, sound, 2025
In Burned Into Memory at Hawkesbury Regional Gallery Australia, July-Aug 2025
Curated by Diana Robson
This new work from land-responsive fieldwork I did across the 12 months after the fires, including an archive of monthly revisits to the same profoundly impacted areas across the 12 months.
The fires burned a total of 5.5 million hectares and killed over 1 billion animals. I was struck by the death of so many animals, but also the evolutionary strength and fire-adaptability of eucalypts to recover and thrive after the profound fire damage- a forest for the Anthropocene.
Across the 12 months that I followed the land and forest I undertook some actions and land-conversations with the post-fire forest; conversations about the animals that died in the fire, of the creatures no longer in the forest.
I made a series of fabric printed apparitions/ callings/ manifestations, for these animals- especially the already endangered ones- the black-tailed wallabies, the greater gliders- drawing on 19th colonial etchings, to reposition past-present-future times within this old and new forest on the oldest continent.
Thinking about the temporary fabric architectures that accompany climate emergencies (emergency tents, tarpaulins, SES tapes, life rafts) and of emergency fabrics as ways to re-encounter the stories of the lost animals.
Above: excerpt from 12 Months In The Epicormic Forest (chapter 3 March: Pyrophytic)
Spending time with locals placing food and water in the bush for surviving animals
Below: Collection of images from 12 months drone and video, and land-conversations
