Here’s what we know
UPCOMING: National Photography Prize, Murray Art Museum Albury, March – September 2024, Goolugatup Heathcote, June – July 2024.
Hillvale Gallery, 2 March – 2 April, 2023.
Consider the telegraph poles, tracing a path walked for a very long time: adorned now with 5g transmitters. The vernacular of the powerlines and the boreholes, and the satellite mapping software that charts our course. How the distance between here and there has shrunk to the size of a holiday, or a weekend away.
This work was imaged and conceived across many locations within the lands of the Wurundjeri Woi-Wurrung, Whadjuk Nyoongar, Jinigudera, Yapurarra, Pindjarup, Nyaki Nyaki, Kalarko, Ngadju, Kaalamaya, Wongatha, Mirniny, Wirangu, Barngarla, Kokatha, Arabana, Arrernte, and Meintangk people. Sovereignty was never ceded.
Made with Aaron Claringbold, Here’s what we know is a show about driving and tourism and extraction and technology and fantasy. It’s about colonial exp(lo/i)ration mythologies, and the visual identity of the bitumen highways and carved stone that monumentalises them. About trying to make sense of all of it. It’s a slide show of things we’ve seen, and things we think we know; about 21st century mobility and colonial place-making; and living in this place, at this time, in this way.
REVIEW ︎︎︎ George Criddle, Here’s what we know, Memo Review
Front space:
Two car seat headrest TVs on fabricated aluminum stands at the artists eye heights
Video slideshows of screenshots from mapping software, moving around/discovering monuments to ‘Australian’ colonial ‘explorers’, interspersed with stills from car advertisements
Back space:
Slide projector with carousel playing 80 slides of artists photography on rotation
Accompanying narration with sound design by Bonnie Cummings
This project was made possible through generous support from Yarra City Arts 2021 Annual Grants Program, and the City of Melbourne’s 2020 COVID-19 quick response grants. Many thanks to Tristen Harwood for the generous conversations, Bonnie Cummings for the sound design, Marcello Rotar for the headrest stand fabrication, and Jason Hamilton, Andy Johnson, Sarah Pannell and all at Hillvale. Thanks also to Jack Mitchell, Eliki Reade, Catherine Ryan, Paul Boyé, Jaxon Waterhouse, Yen Tzu Chang, Melody Paloma, Louis Marlo, Ela Stiles, and Paddy Hay.
Install images Aaron Claringbold
Opening night images Sarah Pannell