Series: Preserving
The ongoing series entitled Preserving conveys my frustrations and fears for the preservation of the earth’s environment.
Through exploring motivations and methods of preservation, I am examining our will, ability, and power, to preserve in the Anthropocene. Will it be enough?
Preserving: item 744 shows a photograph suspended in water within a jar on a stainless steel surface. Darkness surrounds the jar, but light penetrates through the glass onto the scene of the bush. Like the environment it depicts, the photograph is isolated, fragile, damaged, and collapsing. It is already a historical artefact – a moment in time, preserved. The jar is full of water: so vital to life, so capable of destruction.
The vintage domestic jar, a universal tool used for preserving food, serves as a reminder of our ability, across time and cultural differences, to do what needs to be done.
Winner: Grand Prize, Hahnemühle Summer Salon, 2023
Australian Centre for Contemporary Photography
Fitzroy, Victoria.
Finalist: 2023 William and Winifred Bowness Prize,
Museum of Australian Photography
Monash, Victoria
Finalist: 2024 Environmental Art & Design Award,
Manly Art Gallery & Museum
Manly, NSW
Also featured in The Guardian Australia.
Preserving: The Future, presents a photograph contained within a zip-lock bag. This ubiquitous and problematic convenience is excellent at preserving the child’s lunch, yet detrimental to the environment of the child’s future.
The children in the photograph are sandwiched between the environment behind them and the rising waters at their feet. The zip-lock bag is half-filled with flood waters and debris, blurring the lines between the rising tide in the photograph and the rising flood waters in the bag.
Preserving: The Future illustrates the omnipresent tension in the modern mundane. The everyday micro-decision, juxtaposed against the macro-reality of the current epoch.
Artist’s note: Re-purposed, gifted zip-lock bag containing photograph by the artist and flood waters collected in the Hawkesbury River in 2024 and 2025.
My exploration of this series continues
Galleries
