Nepean River (c1890), 2022

Albumen Photograph, Oil, Linen, KoPro VL Flock, 75x40cm 

Exhibited at HOTA (Home of the Arts), QLD  

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The artwork recontextualises an original photograph of the Nepean River (c1890) by an unknown government photographer who was under the instruction to document “places of interest to the colony.” Combining the photograph with different registers of seeing potential value—the green screen, the hand tint, the black void, the unprimed linen—draws attention to the tension in settler colonial landscape photography. This tension is the necessity to represent both emptiness and “interest” for the white possessive gaze.