NEVER BEEN THERE

(BUT I REMEMBER)

With this installation I have created a landscape: an imagined Shetland Islands.  This is the homeland of my grandmother, a place which I have never been to, except through stories and photos.

While exploring a way to interpret my ideas, I became intrigued with the language; the sound of the words; and the place names.  The layers of occupation of Shetland Islands are clearly revealed in these words. And particularly place names which are descriptive of geographic features, and also the particular community at the time.  These words reference a history of occupation, by different groups, over thousands of years.

One very eloquent way to describe this group of islands, holms, skerries and stacks situated in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean is to say they are fixed points in an ever-changing watery environment.

AFTER HINCHINBROOK

A YEAR IN THE MAKING

November, 2017

A collaboration of work by Hannah Parker and Claire Freer.

After we walked for 6 days along Hinchinbrook Island, QLD, Claire and I went on to our lives, but kept talking and creating our response.  We decided to exhibit this work together.  I arranged 100 postcard size watercolour sketches in a line around the wall, something like a horizon line which led to a series of screenprints.  Claire stood her  textured ceramic cycads in the middle, using the sand as a device to guide people to walk around them.  The exhibition became an installation about place.