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“I am not water nor stone,
I am not air nor fire
Says the heart. I am no other creature.
I have come out of nothing and desire all.
This is the voice of the joy of my heart
As I see on the river
The light of the risen sun.” (Wright 58)
From cultural history, mythology and fabricated tropes, some semblance of belonging to land emerged in the minds of early Australian colonist immigrants, albeit one founded on European thoughts about landscape as wilderness or a grand view to be possessed, rather than intrinsic knowledge of prior histories and meaning of landscape in this country.
Such landscape ‘traditions’are difficult to break. Gary Lee refers to Tony Tjamiwa’s description of non-Aboriginal tourists who visit Uluru to describe how ‘exponents of the landscape tradition’ view the landscape in much the same way as tourists do, capturing fleeting moments or snapshots of land:
“The tourists hear a little about this place and a little about that place [at Uluru] and they put it all together in one bucket and shake it up. Everything gets broken and mixed up, and when they pour it out in their own country to try and remember, they don’t know what pieces go together. They should take it home in their hearts and then they’d remember” (Tjamiwa qtd. in Lee 109).
Tjamiwa’s words urge us to take ‘country’ into our hearts rather than capture it from a distance, and fleetingly. The camera as a modernist invention has facilitated the ‘snapshot’ mentality that pervades contemporary attitudes to ‘tourism’ and landscape. The camera distances and screens the landscape and creates a fleeting visual record of that observed rather than that directly experienced. Roland Barthes suggests that a photograph actually blocks memory, replacing the sensorial and physical experience of “involuntary memory” with “the dull certainties of history”(qtd. in Batchen 15). When faced with a sublime landscape (an object of desire) which stirs the heart’s emotions, the camera can become a vehicle of power which captures (literally and metaphorically) the landscape (object of possession), making “that thing, both elusive yet forceful in its presence; near at hand and unreachable as the horizon (Thomas 8)”, seem attainable.
A relationship with beloved homeland can last a lifetime and endure time, change of ownership, war, famine, drought and hardship, and can cross cultural divides. When traditional Aboriginals whose ancestors inhabited country for over forty thousand years bodily leave their home country, they never think of leaving it forever, and always consider it their ‘proper country’ (Read 12). Arthur Boyd came to live on the banks of the Shoalhaven River after experiencing a strong desire to return ‘home’ to Australia following a prolonged stay in England. Boyd spent an idyllic childhood growing up in Victoria, yet his adult Shoalhaven home of 20 years consolidated his identity as an Australian and firmly established his sense of belonging to the Australian landscape. Unlike many other landscape artists at the time who were “mimicking the complacency of a permanent Antipodean arcadia” (McKenzie 7), Boyd’s paintings reveal a darker side of the landscape which comments upon the plight of Indigenous Australians, the disregard for their existence, and the threat posed to the environment. His Riversdale and Bundanon works are pivotal, in that they pose a challenge to take heed of the future of the land and find the capacity for ‘redemption and change’ (McKenzie 8).
The Shoalhaven River landscape where Boyd made his home, facilitated a ‘language of landscape’ which was ‘loud with dialogues’ that not only connected him to the Australian landscape (Seear 21), but also the landscape to white settler history. Boyd imbues the landscape with mythological figures, symbols and elements to develop redemptive narratives which provoke and challenge thought about our treatment of Indigenous people and the environment. In this way, landscape is a vehicle for reconciliation. Boyd chose to confront the issue of landscape in this country and adopted a perspective which was grounded less in the self and more in its place the world, viewing himself as a “variable participant in an unfolding set of relationships” rather than “an isolated entity, crucified by the terms of the narrative” (Langford 117).
The Subliminal series are time-exposures that capture the pulse and energy of the Riversdale site. Camera and body-in-motion trace the shifting light of the rising sun as it penetrates river and forest, blurring form and time.
Diane Epoff
Works cited
Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida: Reflections of Photography. London: Jonathon Cape, 1982.
Batchen, Geoffrey. Forget Me Not: Photography and Remembrance”. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2004. 15.
Langford, Martin. Ngara: Living in this Place Now. ed. John Muk Muk Burke and Martin Langford. Wollongong: University of Wollongong, 2004. 117.
Lee, Gary. “Lying about the Landscape.” Lying about the Landscape. ed. Geoff Levitus. North Ryde, N.S.W.: Craftsman House, c1997. 109.
McKenzie Janet. Arthur Boyd at Bundanon. London: Academy Editions-Academy Group Ltd, 1994. 7, 8.
Seear, Lynne, Introduction. Darkness and Light: The Art of William Robinson. Ed. Lynne Seear. South Brisbane: Queensland Art Gallery, 2001. 21
Thomas, Martin. Introduction. Uncertain Ground : Essays Between Art and Nature. Ed. Martin Thomas. Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1999; Monterey: Brooks Cole, 1973. 8.
Wright, Judith. Collected Poems: 1942-1985. Sydney: Harper Collins, 1999 (first pub 94 repr 96, 98 x 2) 58.
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