Bushlore was a project consisting of video, installation, performance and sculpture that unfolded from 2011-2014. It began in my studio on Widjabul Wia-bul Country and involved travelling my childhood home on Wemba Wemba Country to install and inhabit strike camp. At its core is was a journey back home in order to awaken old memories and confront my history and ancestry through re-inactment.
Assemblage - 2011
I began this journey into Bushlore by creating a small animation, a touchstone that I could refer back to ground me in the intention of what I was unearthing. It was also important for me to capture the feeling I was envoking, there is a real visual language to bushlore that I still access today. Here in this animation you can see the threads of this beginning to reveal themselves. From the violence of colonisation to the beauty of the Australia Landscape - I grappled with the multi layered history of my family and connection to this Land go my birth.
Assemblage 2011
metamorphosis - 2012
The film metamorphosis follows the journey back to my childhood home, there is a strong tension between who I have become and the person that I left behind. The land of my birth had called me back, but the separation and grief of my disconnection created a barrier to my reintegration with the landscape. I embarked on a series of rituals and attunements that aimed to to reopen the pathways of connection and heal old wounds. Through the film metamorphosis we see my initial investigations into attunement with the landscape through ritualised gestures of transformation. Metamorphosis was the precursor for the installation and inhabitation of Strike Camp.
Wemba Wemba Country 2011
strike camp - 2012
Strike Camp gathered its initial inspiration from the 1891 Shearers Strike, during that time the shearers took to the bush living in make shift camps as a way to stay protected from prosecution by the police. This story resonated with me as I too felt like I was safe in the bush, not only safe, but free of any constructs of what my gender entailed. The problem with history is that it is biased and rarely includes stories of women or the stories Indigenous People’s who were violently killed in order to take control of the land. To gain new insight into myself, my connection to the land and the culture I was surrounded by I created my own strike camp, a protest against a life unfulfilled and a yearning to be whole again. When I grew up we didn’t learn about the true history of this land, I knew nothing of the culture and traditions that had come before the violence of colonisation. It was time to take full responsibility to educate myself, not only about the dreaming of Wemba Wemba Country but about the deeper unspoken history of genocide during the colonisation of this place and my own connection to it. This is a journey I am still on today.
Wemba Wemba Country 2011
OBJECTS
Bushlore captured a feeling, a texture, a patina, an essence. I wanted to surround myself with objects that transported me. My background as an Interior Designer led me to homewares. Cushions made from organic linen, hand-painted textiles, Bushlore talismans for journeys and illustrative interventions onto plates, just to name a few.
