Once Was a Field was the solo exhibition created during my Parramatta Council Artist Fellowship, 2010-2011. This work forms an Homage both to the Parramatta River, and to the famous Bauhaus teacher and colour practitioner, Josef Albers.

​

The work was part performance, part object, part painting, and boat. It was filmed travelling down the very tail-end of the Parramatta River on a raft, painted with colour and shape taken from The Bauhaus colourist - Josef Albers’ famous Homage to the Square series. These works investigate colour relationships, and as such, are inherently couched in nature, perception and awareness of our surroundings. Placed literally into the landscape, the work attempts to demonstrate the function of Albers' work.

 

It was also a mimicry of the colonial migration into Parramatta, which of course used the river as a road, as the indigenous owners had before them for many centuries.

 

Once Was a Field explores the hybrid nature of contemporary painting together with simple transgressions of ordinary life. 

Paintings gently perform in suburban landscapes of Greater Sydney.
A series of laser cut paintings that were  based on photographs of the western suburbs. The paintings are taken back to the sites of the original photographs. The photographs focussed on introduced species of garden plants, once popular and carefully shaped and cultivated. They are unruly testaments to the organic nature of the city, and a memorial to the generations of migrants who live here, who naturally cultivate their own way of life, despite governmental attempts, through policy, to modify behaviour and cultural practices.

​

This work was supported by the Parramatta Artist Fellowship.