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At the Institute of Australian Geographers Conference in 2022, discussion took place around the potential of collaboration between geographers and artists. But if the geographer is pursuing a visual arts practice on her own account, what form might communication of geographical research take as a fusion between the disparate interests of the researcher? And how can this nexus of interests function in the interests of broadening engagement with geographical ideas? The works made for the exhibition Baaka Ngamaka’inana: The River is our Mother, represent a non-traditional research output in the form of tentative toe in the waters of the emerging field of geohumanities. The collection of mixed-media textile works focuses on performative colonialist practices of mapping and naming landscape features as acts of alienation and seizure. The pieces represent reaches of the Baaka/Darling River and its tributaries and distributaries, and trace the imprinting of layers of lands administration practice on the landscape through dye, digital print, piecing and stitch. The geographical literature is used as the basis for a stitched critique of the process of ‘exploration’, and of the application of names and boundaries to Country already rich in narrative-associated place names as if it were tabula rasa. The work formed part of a joint exhibition, about the Baaka and its layers of meaning, with acclaimed Baakantji artist Badger Bates, and textile surface designer Julie Paterson. The exhibition featured extensive public programming during the period 30th August 2024 to 27th October 2024. |
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