My work is inspired by nature and place. For Heatwave I have been using layers of paint to create the suggestion of hot, open, Australian landscapes. I have allowed myself an horizon, a sky, perhaps a feeling of distance and of heat, and maybe I have given in to my love of watching birds flying across the sky. But really I have spent hours and hours being mesmerized by colour and form, lines and edges on canvas.

Sunken Reflections

This estuary on Boon Wurrung/ Bunurong Country ebbs and flows with oceanic energy; each day edges and limits are blurred with the waxing and waning tide. It is no secret that the temperature is raising and the ocean is warming directly from human inaction and blind, bottomless consumption. This estuary and all that rely on it as their home face serious threat. How can we each begin to reconnect with the place we call home and be a-part-of (not separate from) the necessary collective healing and rebalancing?

These three drawings physically and cognitively glue together details of memories and mental associations relating to the months of December, January, and February in different years and different periods of life from childhood to adulthood.

Head: I formulated eighty themes that used geographic considerations of everyday life. The awareness of these potential themes emerged during my previous PhD studies, and this exhibition allowed me to reapply these approaches to suburban life, now refreshed and devoid of what I considered the usual artistic responses to place. My newly learnt philosophical considerations required further testing to clarify their use as suitable approaches to place studies, by artists. Photographic survey has been an intricate, initial stage in my heuristic processes. Over two summers, I would conduct field trips, informed by ‘chance wanderings’ as a methodology and by applying gleaned ethnographic techniques. Some photographs were sourced from real estate websites. Later I would loosely triangulate the city findings with considerations of the similar theme in regional areas. This allowed me to locate different societal values and adaptions.

Heart: The small details of domestic landscapes became of greater importance because of my perception of their under-evaluated status. Home-made structures, for instance, could be easily driven past, and my task, prompted by the keyword of ‘adaption’, was made easier when using this bias when observing life-as-it-is. My chance observations were documented, rather than efforts made to find illustrative means to match with a particular assumptive theory. I allowed the environment to ‘speak to me’.

Hand: The paintings are direct representations guided by photographs. They do not use my usual philosophical device of collaged, fictive realities. I had great delight in painting such a large series but would have preferred 3 metre canvases for each individual work! My field trips were planned for the hottest days, and it was not possible to paint on site; I had to rely on my photos, jotted notes and memories.

My hope is that others will see new patterns and pathways in our summer living, beyond my findings.

A wave of heat rises up inside, a gut response to the greed and devastation of our world caused by disconnectedness from Nature, others and intuition.

During a three-month artist residency at Sauerbier House Contemporary Art Exchange (Port Noarlunga, SA) Rosina Possingham and Brianna Speight collaboratively developed ZINC. Unfolding at the peak of summer 2020 and responding to the beachside location of Sauerbier House, the photography project explores feelings associated with extreme heat, beach safety and recreation.

This world has turned to mud; I want to run from it, I want to tame it. The asparagus ships will save us. I am going to bed with a wetsuit on, having conversations with the deceased like a shipworm that is burrowing along the grain funnelling the shavings into its mouth and turning wood into both a protective shell and a meal. I return to the safe anchorage when it is daylight, to bladders with wings scalloped along their margins, to the filter feeders. I am a vampire in a mollusc's world, conquering the ocean (more than pirates). I am seeking a new world governed by my own rules, free from the restraint of another. The asparagus, the pigeon, the blood, the shipworm, bleeding teeth, crab claw and fish eggs travel with me, they are my talismans and my guides.

Two years ago, these works began as experimental playful paintings of the feeling of a hot summer day. Motivated by particular South Australian experiences of wide suburban beaches, stone fruit, and the long wait for a cool change, they were made up of intense colours - vivid vermillion, sharp yellow-green and deep cobalt blue. Over time the work has evolved into a detailed contemplation of the fatal consequences of twenty-first century heatwaves. These works became increasingly inert, bleached, and brittle. Painted on the original bright coloured grounds, these depictions of human bones, reflect upon the morbid inevitability of increasing temperatures. Set up as still life, cropped and nestled in shroud-like fabric these bones act like ancient sculptural artefacts of a time that could be changed by facing our environmental responsibilities.

Thinking about summer
hot nights
bright light
shade
swimming
music
movement
colour

Falling up, then down, down, down.
The world warms up our days and we can hardly bear it.

Photos taken by Rosina Possingham

In my paintings I document the spaces and environment I find myself inhabiting. Last year this included landscapes of Hill End, a historic gold mining town in NSW.

Residing for the month of January in this drought-stricken community, I was drawn to the weathered picket fencing which created borders around the private properties. Many of these fences had fallen posts, creating gaps to allow hungry kangaroos, goats and other animals to freely access people’s gardens or what was left of them due to the water restrictions. I found the motif of the fallen fences to convey more than just the state of the town, the gaps spoke of the changing perspectives and unlikely connections which I observed.

As a 60s child a heatwave bore no portent of catastrophe. It was all sunburnt lips and cashing in bottles at the kiosk for Hi-Tops, Marilyn Monroe and Martha and the Vandellas. The pots I have made are emblazoned with memories of past summers real and imagined - some mythological some prosaic as those long-gone memories meld and fade.