This work continues my interest in the contestation of space along the kanamaluka / Tamar estuary. The impetus is a campaign urging the public and authorities to 'Fix the mud'. Despite using the language of environmentalism, research reveals the campaign is being led primarily by entities with vested interest in the waterways. This conflict raises the idea of a socialised notion of 'nature' and encourages a critical understanding of what political, economic, and social interests dominate the discourse around the estuary's current and future use.
The methodology involves producing landscape photographs and sitting the film at the tide line for a week before returning to the work and developing the sheets in my home studio The end results are markings, etchings, sedimentary influence, light leaks and algae burning onto the film and engaging a type of co-authorship over the final image.
Work from this series has been selected as finalist images in the Mullins Conceptual Photography Prize and the Canberra Contemporary Photographic Prize. In 2024, the image ‘Flocculation #6' won the Judges Commendation at the Perth Centre for Photography’s CLIP landscape award. In the same year, ‘Flocculation #15’ won the Tidal Acquisitive Art Prize at the Devonport Regional Gallery. The judges said of the work -
"This piece conveyed a sense of fragility and randomness of what survives the past. The process of immersing the negatives in the tidal flow leaves traces on the surface, complicating the image and inviting slow contemplation of our relationship to these contested zones.
It is a profound dialogue between place and medium, where decisions around what was presented and how, are convincing and compelling. While it is politically charged given the environmental status of Kanamaluka, it also conveys a sense of history."