As She is Absent, Only the Map is Real
2008
The Alice Springs Art Prize
Araluen Arts Centre
Alice Springs, Central Australia
Paper, petals, thread and mixed media
This work was made in response to being selected as a finalist to exhibit in the Alice Springs Art Prize. It is a series of forty eight small canvases unfolding like the pages of a book. Threads and strands of stories of displacement and dispossession are drawn upon. Materials that reference urban and Central Australian landscapes are incorporated into the work. Questions are raised around how place can be found and remapped when boundaries and borders are shifted or removed.
“Moving away from heartlands we carry complex and layered stories. We map new landscapes and remap the old as we negotiate changes in languages, environments and cultures. What is this topography we imbibe and cradle? How do we trace these meridians that run through our hearts? As these maps of elsewhere unfold within, how do we learn to speak anew and form alternative imaginative relationships with the world?” (Nicola McClelland, 2008.)