My artist talk for Eve of Incarnation is today, Sat 18 Feb, from 130-230pm @blakdotgallery 33 Saxon St Brunswick – Narrm (wheelchair accessible) off Dawson St.
I created this series while artist-in-residence at Police Point Shire Park on Boonwurrung country, redressing the ‘nature nude’ and its common form of describing white, feminine fragility.
Contemplating connection to a landscape as someone whose ancestry belongs elsewhere, I’ve draped myself in its ‘fabric’ – the indigenous and invasive plant species, seaweeds and rocky crags becoming ‘nature couture’.
Resisting ethnographic projections onto my brown-skinned being via allusions to high fashion photography, my soft, scarred and otherwise unkempt body wears unsellable ‘garments’ that only exist in the photographic moment.
These temporal costumes are science-fictional meditations on my transitory contact – and complicated desire to connect – with others’ ancestral land.
Image: Agitator, 2016, 597x420mm, pigment ink on archival cotton rag. #washedashore #grounded #coutureashore #rockon #vulnerability #empowerment #femintimidation #selfportrait #photographicportrait #textaqueen #blakdotgallery #artisttalk (at Blak Dot Gallery)