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Heartland (page 2 of 3)

Julie's description of 3 of the 7 works comprising Heartland:

Now and Then, 2001

This work is about multi generational cycles of life. It physically comprises a strand of twined lomandra plant into which is twined in rhythmic progression cowries shells found upon a beach in north eastern Tasmania. These cowries are strung in a sequence from white to dark brown. The strand forms a necklace that hangs upon a rock lying flush against a wall. Now and then refers to us Tasmanian Aboriginal people, now and then, today and two hundred years ago, now white on the outside, then we were a dark brown, so the work is a kind of literal translation to suggest that we are the same (cowries) on the inside and have only changed on the outside. Learning to love the skin we are in because it is what is inside that counts.

pippie, crow, cowrie, 2001

This work is a musing on familiar objects and how we carry them with us in different ways if their original form is not available. It is also a rhythmic work that speaks about the spacing of shells as strung along a strand to make a traditional Tasmanian Aboriginal cultural object – the shell necklace. It is a kind of mantra to the shells and to ways to remember culture.

Time Capsules (bitter pills), 2001

This work came about in a natural almost effortless way that felt like a gift. I was sitting on the beach near Eddystone lighthouse and picked up a piece of cuttlefish bone and had a urge to carve it. I found my pocket knife and returned to the beach and there on the spot began making small pills in capsule form. There was no reason for making these forms, they just starting being made in a rapid succession until I had a large handful. It occurred to me what I was making at that point was anything that could take me further into being of that place. The title came immediately also at that point, Time Capsules (bitter pills), because I had been musing and making other works about transporting myself back in time to the same place hundreds of years ago. I immediately called them bitter pills, because I don’t think that I would have survived long or enjoyed what I found.

view the final work of Heartlands