LONG BLACK VEIL
She
walks these hills in a long black veil
She
visits my grave when the night winds wail
Nobody
knows, nobody sees
Nobody
knows but me ... *
My work responds to serious current
environmental events, while being deeply engaged with the history of the photographic
medium.
Using a
base layer of camera-less photographs (made not taken), I have employed various historical techniques and approaches, particularly collage and
embossing, connecting to the expansive lineage of the European movements
of Surrealist art, by utilising Dadaist strategies of play and free
association. A recent collaboration with printmaker Rosalind Atkins extends
this approach.
My work portrays ecological circumstances where containment is breached – as with
the disasters of Fukashima and Hazelwood – and the many particulate things that
fall: dust, pollen, sand, carbon, snow.
'Long Black
Veil' evokes the pall of smoke that engulfed and stifled Morwell during the
recent pit fire and draws a parallel with the overflow of contaminated water at
the Fukashima nuclear plant, acknowledging the grief and mourning experienced
by communities effected by such calamitous events.
Bringing
together my accumulated knowledge of European visual arts traditions,
with the immediacy of personal experiences in the Latrobe Valley and Japan,
These multilayered works reflect my desire to champion and
encourage human sensitivity toward the environment.
*
Long Black Veil is a 1959 country ballad, written by Danny Dill and Marijohn
Wilkin and originally recorded by Lefty Frizzell.
