Last Chapter explores the heavy effects of consumerist society on evolution and the natural environment. In today’s world there is constant debate about climate change and the effects of modern society upon the natural world. In my body of work I represent the path of human history and its current trajectory, through the environments that supported this journey of human evolution, into a dark and unnerving environment shaped by today’s society.

The ocean’s process is a ‘dynamic equilibrium’. Always changing, with a constant balance. For my body of work, I focused on a place where the ocean meets the land and created an ocean panorama consisting of aerial photography and painting. My mixed media works use a variety of painting techniques and incorporate resin that is traditionally used for commercial purposes. My intent was to create rich, layered and expressive surfaces that capitalise on the clarity and luminosity of resin to produce brilliance and depth.

Influenced by Romantic ideals, my body of work subverts historical perceptions of the divine natural landscape to express a contemporary view of the consequences of our consumerist society on nature subsequent to the Industrial Revolution. In my work, natural elements are constrained by humanity’s artificial creations. Through the use of synthetic materials and the inherent deconstruction and reconstruction of collage my intent was to reveal the reality of contemporary nature, where plastic waste and landfill have tarnished the grandeur of the divine landscape. What humans once sought to conquer is now destroyed.

After seeing the effects that the ‘Black Summer’ bushfires of late 2019 to early 2020 had on the natural Australian landscape, I felt compelled to explore this event. Through an abstracted style, placing particular attention on the blackened tones and scorched texture of the land, my intent was to evoke a mood of reflection in the audience. I worked with charcoal on paper, using actual charcoal gathered from burnt sites to highlight the physical and conceptual materiality of the medium.

My body of work is an intuitive and personal exploration of the Australian natural landscape. The complex character of this environment is represented in the layers of rich and varying shapes, tones and textures in the work. Eco-dying is used to express this foundationally, as locally-found organic material imbues the paper with a distinctive Australian colour palette and unique, natural abstractions. Stitching and drawing similarly represent the landscape’s complexity in their integration into the papers; they express the detailed, textured intricacies which supplement the larger shape and colour of our beautiful, Australian ecosystem.

Taking a reductionist approach, my body of work, Distillations of Memory and Place, is a series of abstract landscapes representing the essential elements of line, colour, form and texture of the natural environment. I was inspired by the coastal environment that surrounds me. My intent was to express the organic lines and textures that occur naturally by identifying the crucial elements of the environment. In developing my work I realised that perhaps they are not abstract landscapes at all, as they represent the landscape as it truly is, just distilled.

A billabong is a stationary body of backwater, frequently the heart and soul of nature for the surrounding area, enabling new life to start and old life to be sustained. It is part of the regenerative cycle where water is the epicentre of life. My body of work explores the clash of regenerative and self-destructive forces in Australian nature. Australian habitats are constantly alternating between destructive and regenerative cycles – one cannot function without the other, just like beginning cannot exist without end, light without dark and life without death. Prosperity and life flourish through a thick layer of ash.

We can see the significance of life and the experiences we encounter through the land we stand on. Terra Firma uses various perspectives to explore the reality of the barren, rural landscape. In the triptych copper plate intaglio etchings I allude to hardships which we have experienced collectively through fires, droughts and floods. I represent the strength within the environment, and the need to be resilient, through abandoned homesteads and desolate, vast landscapes. Contemporary photographic slides represent travel through the landscape as if through an eagle’s eye, providing a visual lens for the audience as they travel across ‘terra firma’.

Memories give our lives meaning, depth and significance, which in turn elicit emotions and ground us in reality. Growing up in a world of turmoil and an overdependence on technology means real unedited and unfiltered memories provide constancy in our lives, a reality check of where we’ve come from, who we are now, and where we’re going. My body of work is a contemporary exploration of an unchanging landscape using various printmaking techniques to give rise to multiple textural interpretations and perspectives. It represents the timelessness of memories and the importance they have in shaping our lives.