Australian at Heart? 2011

This series of watercolours was shown as part of Sub-division a group show at LEVEL Artist Run Initiative in Brisbane. The work explores the complications of living on land violently colonised by white Australia.

Australian at Heart?, 2011

Shown at Level ARI in 2011 these works investigate the Australian landscape and its complex relationship to identity. These watercolour on paper works act as self portraits, depicting silhouettes of negative space amidst imagined backgrounds of native Australian flora and fauna. Each work is thematic and relates to an area in Australia where I have lived.

As a female Australian of European descent my relationship with the land is distanced and tainted with colonial guilt and confusion. I am the result of my cultural heritage, and although my family has been in Australia for many generations in some ways we are still more closely connected with the green fields of Europe than the arid desert that fills most of the country of my birth. I am part of this landscape, but somehow also distanced from it. In these drawings I am beginning to investigate the complex personal connection I have with being Australian.