Tell us about your exhibition? Being Occupier is art made to move you. Over three rooms the viewer will experience large scale paintings, prints and sculptures that ask what it means to be of settler heritage in Australia as we come to terms with the legacy of the stolen generations and our history of frontier violence.
Why was Being Occupier born? I tried to give visual expression to my struggle to make sense of my relationship to this country that I love so much and yet I now know has been the scene of so much horrific violence against Aboriginal people.
What is your creative process? What art does best is evoke feelings so I try to employ materials and processes to produce sensations in the viewer. I had to go to some very dark places to make this work because the pieces are based on actual historical events that I have abstracted.
What do you hope viewers take from your exhibition? My hope is that people will be moved in some way to think and feel differently about their relationship to this country and its first peoples, our shared history and the kind of future we can make together.
How have artists such as Anselm Kiefer influenced your work? He held a mirror up to German society highlighting its responsibility to ask what it meant to be a post-war German. In a similar vein I ask what it means to be Australian once we know about the atrocities committed to build our nation.
