Grow Up

2023 / ‘Presence’, hahndorf acadeMY, Curated by olivia spiers. Re-EXHIBITED AT FLOATING GOOSE STUDIOS AS PART OF ‘NIGHT SEEN’, CURATED BY JAMIE WILLIS

THIS WORK IS PRESENTED AS A LARGE SCALE, SINGLE-CHANNEL INSTALLATION. PLEASE CONTACT ARTIST FOR VIDEO LINK.

Grow Up is a visual collision of the past and the present, offering an intergenerational portrait of my family’s farm. Captured in 1996, the archival footage traces my mother using a hand-held video camera to film my eldest brother and myself, exploring the farm with a visiting distant family member. Milliseconds of current footage flash across the screen in missable snippets - these were filmed by myself, 27 years later, using a 4K digital video camera, retracing my mother’s steps (3 years older than she was when she filmed the original footage), documenting the same spaces on the family farm.  

The wave pattern flowing across the archival screen is a byproduct of using the same software settings to edit the archival footage with the new footage. There is a way to engineer this not to happen, but it has been intentionally left in the work. I am interested in seeing visual evidence of the software’s inability to reconcile time – a material reflection on the ideas that drive my practice. 

Water tanks, tree lines, sheds, skies, wells, cattle yards, gates, machinery, kites, family, self.  A jarring glimpse of what has been lost, replaced, added, and an opportunity to meditate the impact of colonial farming practices on the Australian landscape.

Grow Up was filmed on Nukunu land, on the artist’s family farm (the Mid-North region, South Australia).