Aftermath (The Installation)

Aftermath was an installation and conglomerate of new mixed-media works that reflected on the legacies of colonial contact. Formed from indoor objects merged with materials from forests, beaches and underground, these works pursue remnant, codified stories of cross cultural encounter from early 1800s Van Diemen's Land. \ud \ud The works in Aftermath present Tasmanian places and their stories as contested and suppressed. 'Sites' are reproduced as GPS coordinates spelling out places of kidnap by black crow shells impressed in cuttlefish, or through the material evidence of places significant to Aboriginal presence or absence. Aftermath reveals our history and stories as a triad, activated in conjunction with places and their objects to mark the histories within us as recallable and conveyable. \ud \ud These works gather together as trace evidence of what came before, what happened here. My aim is to offer for fresh reconsideration aspects of cryptic or unresolved histories that bring us to this point of dim memory. These objects and the repetitive actions that created them aim to trigger a rhythmic form of remembering of this island’s colonial-contact inheritance. \ud \ud The purpose of an exhibition facilitates and quickens my ongoing research of difficult histories. None of the works present finite or fully comprehended stories, instead they offer me a means to register my own siting at this moment in the search, the unravelling and slow comprehension of colonial contact. Tea-tree, coals and shells of the outdoor-world are placed in this exhibition amidst indoor furnishings to provide a key or coda to deciphering our furtive histories in the real. Our shared pasts linger as accessibly amidst hills and along old roadways of this island as in the texts of the library and archive. \ud \u