Bermagui Matters

Our local area has been under threat from questionalble developers with an eye on their bank accounts rather than the common interests of the communbity. Bermagui Matters are a group of volunteers who banded together to opposed the development from the outset. The development proposed clear felling of a large swath of forest that served as a habitat for a flock of Glossy Cockatoos, multiple Wallabies and Kangaroos amongst other species that had already undergone disturbance from prior development in the area. This piece was created on the evening we heard that the DA had been refused by the local council. A great victory and a huge relief for the local inhabitants, both human and other.

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I am a lifelong visual artist currently living on the far south coast of NSW. I have made art in many forms over most of my life, including an earlier practice in ceramics and installation but at the moment I am exploring watercolour and mixed media more deeply. I am interested in surfaces that carry their own history; layers that partly bury what came before; stains, washes, broken lines, erasures and process-generated marks. I am drawn to quiet atmospheric fields interrupted by searching, investigative marks; fragments emerging from obscurity; and small details that imply something larger beyond the frame. I move between abstraction and recognition, surface and depth, expansiveness and intimacy, concealment and revelation. My process can involve allowing, covering, obscuring, excavating, selecting and revealing rather than simply building towards a predetermined image. I want fragments and clues to hold attention, recognition to arrive gradually, and ideally a discovery to change the viewer's understanding of what they thought they were seeing. I want them to feel that they have found something rather than simply been shown it.