Mungo resonances

Lake Mungo is still. Even when there is a breeze blowing there is a sense of deep, quiet, stillness. I felt it the morning we got up early to watch the sunrise, and the day we were shown some of the secrets on the lunette; stone artefacts and petrified trees, there in plain sight if you know what to look for.

During the few days I spent at Lake Mungo I thought constantly about how I imagine and experience time, aware of my time there being so very brief in relation to the deep history of the place. I was awed by seeing the ancient wombat bones scattered on the sand right where the animal had died; and by the idea that footprints – marks that are usually ephemeral – could remain for millenia.  

My work is inspired by traces in the environment and the different life-spans of the animals and plants – from the bones and footprints that have been there for thousands of years to the shadows that are constantly moving and changing with the daily path of the sun, and the apostle birds I heard in the trees but only saw briefly.  

I put paper on the ground and traced the tree shadows with ink as they moved with the sun and the paper became stained and marked with the red dirt. I then drew the shadow images in charcoal and translated them into a series of etchings on copper plates. Rather than print on paper I’ve worked out a technique of pouring plaster onto the inked-up plate to create a tile bearing the image which is then installed on the floor. The plaster sucks up the black ink as it dries – and the other substances in the ink, the oils and chemicals become visible on the plaster surface, creating mottled yellow and red ochres.

Thinking about the contrasting senses of time, I created two further images I made into screen prints. I photographed the ancient wombat bones resting on the pink sand, and the white rectangles of paper I put down to catch the tree shadows. I transferred these images to silk screens and printed them onto paper, the black ink creating starkly contrasting images on the white paper surface. 

In 2017 I had the privilege of being invited to participate in a project that took me to Lake Mungo with a group of fantastic artists supported by The Art Vault in Mildura.

More on this project can be seen here: Mungo Prints

The resulting work was exhibited at the Mildura Arts Centre as part of the Australian Print Triennial in 2018 and at the Latrobe University Gallery in Bendigo in early 2019.