meeting place An exhibition – and – locating the Country: an Australian bricoleuse’s inquiry An exegesis

This practice-led PhD research investigated alternate forms of articulation to relate stories of place-making, as narrative or object, and added threads to the complex meshwork and herstory of the Country. The research was conducted in ‘The Country’, of the north-eastern Goldfields and Yalgorup Lakes in Western Australia. These two non-urban sites provided unique experiences of the bush, local people’s stories and understandings of time. The research investigated the implications of non-urban spaces as studios in relation to the concepts of place, time and narrative. This research was, in part, experiential and drew on an absorbed embodied awareness of notions of the Country (a place). This was embedded in an ethical onto-epistemology, through the process of piecing together bricolages of seemingly unrelated fragments of methods, conceptual frameworks and materials in simple and complex ways. In making and thinking, gleaned, recycled and repurposed bits and pieces were gathered and utilised during nomadic wayfaring. The research drew on ideas pertaining to wayfaring and yarning, ‘mapping’ and experiencing the Country through the multi-faceted lenses of the bricoleuse, the geoscientist, the maker and the artsworker. Experiencing the materiality of the Country was a spatial, kinaesthetic and tactile engagement over long periods of time in the midst of the social, physical, material and biotic elements of specific ‘places’. Narratives and artworks emerged from piecing together pre-used fragments into textiles, then curated to form assemblages in built environments, and at the non-urban sites. Collective gatherings of people making, and sharing were facilitated as part of my practice. Yarning about and creatively mapping, these situated experiences in place, aimed to encourage connections and collaborative understanding between the city and the Country. This research contributes to the value and importance of using non-urban spaces both as sustainable sources of material for artwork and as studios. A bricoleuse’s approach to field-based/practice-led research contributes a relational, conceptual and methodological approach to creative arts, and to collaborative and interdisciplinary research frameworks