Terre Aborigéne

STATEMENT

Terre Aborigéne is a personal reflection on the Australian landscape, not as an empty space, but as an embodiment of the creation myth of Australia's original inhabitants. From this animist perspective the shape and form of the land – the rocks, riverbeds and waterholes, reveal the presence of the ‘Ancestor Spirits’. The ‘Dreamtime’, the creation myth of Australia’s Aborigines, describes both a physical place but also a state of mind, an internal resonance with the land as a living, breathing entity. These images record a journey in the land of the Arrente and Anangu people, whose home is in the central north of Australia. We travel west from Alice Spring along the West MacDonnell ranges, then south along the Finke River to the sacred site of the Anangu people - Kata Tjuta (many heads). The original prints have been made using a 19th century photographic process known as gum bichromate. It uses multiple applications of layers of colour to create ‘pigment prints’, which combine watercolour paint and gum arabic hardened by the action of light.

Publishing Date 2007 / 02 / 27