Show Room 2018

SHOW ROOM 2018

2018, Newcastle Regional Gallery, Rocks, Claude glass, Bronze Wall Plaque, Digital Island, Shade Cloth Banner, Scaffolding. Produced for The 1818 Project Bronze wall Plaque made ‘in collaboration with Curator Belinda Howden’ and Digital animation produced in Collaboration with Director Isaac Turier.

This body of work investigates colonial visions of land. The elements that make it up – the scaffolding, printed shade-cloth, rocks, Claude glass, a digital replication of Nobbys and a bronze plaque – all call upon the language of construction, dominance and control over the landscape we live amongst. Here, the treatment of landscape is not only considered as a physical or sculptural object to be manipulated, but it also describes prevailing attitudes of power and the politics of place.

The guiding questions that underpin my work are: How do we experience nature? What do we consider to be ‘natural’?

In the context of 1818, particularly considering Joseph Lycett’s paintings and their construction of landscape, my work questions the legacies of these images. They frame landscape as a ‘view’, as something to be dominated, captured, controlled and even constructed. These paintings have played a significant role in naturalizing colonial presence, particularly within Newcastle. My work responds not only to this historical framework but examines these continuing attitudes of power over landscape and environmental intervention.