Slippages

The rocks in Mirima are continuously moving and changing.  What at first appeared to be a spectacular land formation reveals itself to be a land in flux.  There are large 'wounds' on the walls of the formations where rocks slides have occurred and as I walk the tracks I can see the rocks on the paths become broken and gradually reduced to sand.  The cycle of formation and disintegration seems far too rapid in country that is so ancient.

I have started doing ochre drawings about the slippages in the land and the feeling that the rocks could slide around underneath my feet.  Rather than producing work about the formation of country I am interested in formlessness and entropy.  As I draw I want to challenge the tradition of making forms through line or tone.  However, I want to keep the tension of a desire for form, of a viewer's continuous looking for figures and references in a work.  So whilst rock formations may be apparent to the viewer, the surface will deny any solid figure on a ground.  The delineations will be broken by white erasures and black shadows that vie for dominance, a continual shift or negotiation for prominence.

I soak paper in the waterhole and then place it on a large rock, pushing the paper into the crevices in the rock.  I pour sumi ink over the paper, allowing it to settle and dry in the crevices.  I mix crushed ochres with a Japanese rice glue and paint two different colours on the paper and allow to dry.  Back at home I try erasing the ochres with a rubber but it is very unpleasant as I get hayfever and sore fingers.  I am also concerned with the painterly quality and strength of the ochre.  They refer too strongly to the Indigenous Kimberley Art Tradition.  I feel no right to paint country or have such a strong reference to the land so I wash the drawing in a tub and wipe back the ochres.  I love this work and feel like I am caressing the country.  The paper looks like beautiful drapes in Giotto's Italian frescoes and this link back to my art history and tradition reassures me.  As I work on the drawings more and more, they begin to have even stronger memories of ancient frescoes, as if they are remnants from a  lost painting.  I feel I am beginning to find a process to develop an understanding of the land here.