'A Drawing A Day' during the floods formed the foundations of the Flood Language series.
Flood Language Exhibitions
2017: Flood Language: The Big and the Little, Gatakers Artspace, Maryborough, 27 February - 2 April 2017
2016: Flood Language 2, Gayndah Regional Gallery, 6 May - 18 June 2016
2014: Flood Language 2, Noosa Regional Gallery, 27 November - 25 January 2015
2014: Flood Language, Gatakers Artspace, Maryborough, 4 January - 2 February 2014
2013: Flood Language, Queensland College of Art, Masters exhibition
2013: All that Holds, POP Art Gallery, Queensland College of Art
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This body of work is in response to increased flooding activities due to extreme weather activities, especially in Queensland in recent years. These catastrophic conditions as part of the climate change phenomena force us to re-envision our relationship with nature.
My focus has been on the effects on the Mary River, in particular the Kidd Bridge in the middle of Gympie.
I am fascinated with how the debris on the fences after the flood makes its own random language out of grasses, branches etc. This ‘language’ was speaking to me like a form of graffiti, a direct and immediate form of communication. Local authorities and land owners appeared to be treating the debris like it was graffiti by ripping it off the fences as quickly as they could once the waters receded. There are probably more practical reasons, but I found the link interesting. Cartographers draw boundaries and lines on the landscape and landowners built the defining “walls” for my “graffiti” exhibiting defiance at this marking of boundaries. So could my ‘flood language’ be seen as a rebel trying to make a statement?
Flood Spirit. Lomandra and wax. 2014
Flood Spirit. Ink and Mary River flood mud on paper, 77cm x 110cm. Series 2013-2014
Talking to Mary 2. Handmade fibres - lomandra, bladey grass and banana trunk, 80cm x 120cm. 2013. Photo: Tony Webdale
Unstoppable. Encaustic on Board, 170cm x 60cm. 2015 (SOLD)
Fenced 2. Ink and Mary River flood mud on paper, 70cm x 50cm. 2013 Finalist Flying Arts Queensland Regional Art Awards 'Vital Signs' toured Qld 2014. Photo: Tony Webdale
Testing The Waters. Ink and Mary River flood mud on paper, 110cm x 330cm. 2014
When Will It Stop? (detail). Ink and Mary River flood mud on paper, 110cm x 900cm. 2014
Flood Language: The Big and the Little - Exhibition at Gatakers Art Space, Maryborough. 2017
The visual connection to paper making led me to revisit an old passion – to create several pieces using either the actual debris fibre or local riverbank plant fibres like native lomandra, or introduced banana, tapping into another issue of land degradation and over-farming, often causing landslides on the banks of the river. My love of drawing was bought out in the larger paper works, where I have tapped into the raw energy of the flooding waters and more recently the macroinvertebrates living in the water.
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