Point Pilcher, Darug and Gundungurra Country (Blue Mountains). Photo by Irena Conomos

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“It is our imagination that persists in clothing things; but the things themselves are divinely naked”. Marguerite Yourcenar: Alexis

Mountain, water and cave refer to three places where recent work has been made – the Blue Mountains, the Central Coast, and the Grampians.

To live in the Blue Mountains is to inhabit a high place, on top of a mountain at 1050 meters. It is close to nature, subject to constant change and sometimes extreme conditions. A thread of habitation stretches through vast areas of wilderness; the nest is precarious, fragile and temporary.

This place has a way of seeping under the skin, into the imagination and shaping interior landscapes. Mind and being are permeated by its presence; restless, inspiring and a place of refuge.

Certain elements seen in physical landscapes – plateau, escarpment and valley – become and remain beacons for traversing the ground of imagination. The plateau is a safe, flat place where human experience is played out. The escarpment forges an edge, an abrupt change in direction and a fall into an unknown wilderness. The valley is verdant where water flows, and is a place of healing and nurturing. This is the landscape of anxiety where physical aspects of place are mirrored in the shifting images of interior spaces.

2021   

Work made over the last few years focuses on a place – Woy Woy Bay. Certain features of this environment are the subject of works made – mountain, water and jetty. Viewed each day, a surface of water is constantly changing and moving, alluding to a state of impermanence. A ridge of mountains overhangs the water, resilient and timeless. Man-made jetties form bridges in various stages of dishevelment, undermined by the forces of nature. They reach out across water to a distant shore, never reaching the other side.

Making deeper connections with nature and place, are underlying themes of these works.

Some elements from the surrounding environment have been emphasised – colour, shape, texture, line – and much of what is seen in reality has been omitted. Images seek to capture atmosphere and essence of place: things felt and filtered by the imagination, shaped by working intuitively, making spontaneous decisions and exploring the processes of making.

 2023

Recent work was begun after spending time at Bunjil’s Shelter near the Grampians in Victoria. This site contains a cave with ancient rock art and is protected from entry by a wire cage. Responding from my own experience of being on site, a number of woodcuts were painted with black ink and carved. Lino blocks covered with wax were scraped and gouged, and later etched in the studio. Blocks were printed in different configurations on various handmade papers as single and multiple images. (A ‘multiple’ is an image made up of many parts.) These works are a reflection on the instability of living in present times, and the need to create one’s own places of shelter.

Thank you to the Traditional Owners of Gariwerd, Jadawadjaili and Djab Wurrang people on whose land I visited. 2024

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