“This series examines the insidious power of beauty. At once a spell that can inspire connection to a place, but also as a tool to impose ownership. In this case to assert a National Identity, and as a facet of the attempted erasure of First Nations people.
The works form an ending sequence to echo this effacement as the light of day is dispersed by night. Like the obfuscation of vanishing points into abstraction, the works probe the vanishing of people from landscape. A format referencing Gordon Bennett’s seminal work ‘Untitled (dismay, displace, disperse, dispirit, display, dismiss)’ from 1989.
This work continues my appropriation of Western vernaculars of representation. In this case investigating the Impressionistic precepts of Arthur Streeton and the Heidelberg School, through the iconic vista he painted facing towards the Curlew Camp from Sirius Cove.
Truth, Beauty, Peace, Leisure and Love are all key associations in the imagination of the Heidelberg School; this series seeks to unspool these ideas by gently presenting the irony and fraught reality.
As a First Nations person it is interesting to respond to Country you don’t belong to, so it became a process of responding to the depictions of the site. During my time on location it was easy to see the abundance and spell of this place and how much it is enjoyed. As well as the indelible marks the care of First Nations Traditional Owners have had on this Country. To know it is to love it. It then became a reclamation of its manifest beauty – rather than an imposition and erasure, it aims to present a wholistic narrative.”
Thea Anamara Perkins, 2025.