Commissioned by two sisters who wanted an artwork inspired by one of the sister’s rural property and memories of family.

A group show of cyanotypes at Sutton Village Gallery (New South Wales). My three images: ‘Eliza Gould and the Satin Bower Bird’, ‘Acacia lunata’ and ‘Acacia rubida’. The latter two are wet cyanotypes. Click on image to enlarge.

‘In Counterpoint’, a joint exhibition with Nino Bellantonio at Belconnen Arts Centre, May to June 2021. Click on image to enlarge.

Nino Bellantonio, an award-winning architect and visual artist, and I decided to try an experiment in collaboration in the making of artworks for this exhibition. For our respective artworks to progress or continue, we each needed to respond to the other’s work. Working in this form of counterpoint, Nino and I met each month (Covid allowing) for 18 months, each presenting ourworks-in-progress to each other for a two-person critique. The common theme that became apparent early in the process was place-inspired art, with a particular focus on novel ecosystems - the mix of native and exotic, which results from people inhabiting new places. Nino’s work was influenced by the Black Summer fires, the COVID-19 pandemic, and readings during lockdown. Patrick White’s novel, ‘A Fringe of Leaves’ was particularly poignant, as was Jack Kerouac’s, ‘American Haiku’. The consequences of changes to the landscape wrought by colonial occupation became a topic of discussion, as was my interest in John and Elizabeth Gould’s natural history art. The results are artworks that draw upon the individual and collective process, where the work of both artists cross boundaries between collage, printmaking and photography.