(12.05.2025)
This is the last day of my residency at Bogong Village, the past week has gone both slowly and quickly with the time spans shifting and changing depending on which end you're looking from.
Theres a slightly dreamy, cinematic atmosphere here, a combination of the unseasonal warmth, the stillness of the air and the luxurious absence of distracting urban clutter.
I’ve found it inspiring and productive and spent the last week putting together a short piece of animation using images I’ve collected and drawn while I've been here in the village and the surrounding areas.
This was screened it alongside my other films at the artist talk at Mount Beauty library, on Friday afternoon, this was well attended with a warm and receptive audience.
My creative practice needs an anchor point to the histories of the place I’m in so I spent time reading about the indigenous history, Hydro Scheme, the geology, ecosystems and the political and economic movements at the time this village was built.
Sometimes these things are referenced visually in the work but often it’s just a necessary grounding practice so I can feel more connected to the land I’m residing on.
Last Sunday did the walk to Mount Bogong, a staircase-style, straight up the spur line scramble, the journey being a wild collection of terrains, vantage points, physical discomforts, mental challenges and elation.
The summit flattens out to soft golden grassy plains, an inviting and unexpected landscape.
Again that stillness and sinking into the warm grass, theres the sensation of being held gently by the mountain and connecting with its deeper chronologies.
I spent a long time staring at horizons and as I looked out towards Kosciusko I remembered the artist Mirka Moira’s journey and her description of her feeling there
‘that night I could feel the mountains calling me and by night I could feel myself turning into a spirit of the snow, in the morning this new world was waiting for me, the mountains were staring at me and I stared back at them...this is how one falls on love”
Mirka’s Palace of Dreams 1987
There’s something about walking in a landscape, drawing it, then making a moving image from it, that plays with your sense of scale it allows for a sense of both living within and the outside work, blurring the boundary between me creating the artwork and it creating me.
My time here has been precious, I’m immensely grateful for it and to Madelynne for her support of artists by holding time and space for creative opportunities. Tomorrow will be a slightly reluctant return to sea level with all it’s entanglements, but the work I’ve started here will allow me to hold onto it’s atmosphere and keep drawing on it’s rich bed of inspiration long into the future.