Sauerbier House, Lounge Gallery, 14 Dec 2019 – 25 Jan 2020

The works in this exhibition represent my felt and imaginative responses to fluid social memories of the Noarlunga coastline and Onkaparinga River during my Sauerbier House Cultural Exchange Residency. By drawing on anecdotal knowledge gathered from historical accounts, archival maps, early photographs and newspaper records, I have explored points of change in time and place along the Onkaparinga River between Port Noarlunga and (Old) Noarlunga. My inquiry has included social memories of Sauerbier House, a spectral presence in this changing landscape, located at a site where produce and goods were once unloaded from the river for transport to waiting ships moored to a long chain off the coast. After making local observations by walking, paddling and exploring sites of social and environmental change between the coast and river, I have distilled these memories of place and history into a series of installations to evoke an unsettling disconnect between the colonial mindset and the environment that it occupied. These works are a reminder of the processes and legacies of change through colonial incursions, as a continuum from the past into the present.