Backyard Mix, Honey for the bees by Emily Imeson
These works have developed through playful material exploration, questioning how to engage with both the landscape and painting in ways that consider the climate complexities we now face. I live and work on a degraded cattle farm in Coffee Camp, NSW where we, (new land-holders), are currently undertaking land and creek-bank rehabilitation projects.
My practice has fallen into rhythm of this life as land-carer, mother and artist, connecting with and responding to sites on the farm. Material choices are guided by desires to mesh morals into materiality, while acknowledging tensions embedded in the complicated and sometimes contradicting ways humans interact with the world around them. I have focused on dirty, discarded and wasted things; weeds, garden off-cuts, creek-bank rubbish, found farm objects and op-shop items.
The resit drawings reference fireweed and butterflies alongside microscopic images of fungi (unidentified), lantana, and kangaroo grass. These drawings have been stained with botanical pigments, soil from the mountain, and silt from the creek. Others have been stained with a backyard potion made from the residual matter of previous resist works, pigments from fireweed flowers, corymbia leaves and lantana plants, rust and mud.
Through an expanded painting framework I am working towards an environmental awareness in my practice, shifting a dependency on plastic-based paint and embracing experimental modes to develop my understanding of ‘landscape’. The crochet edges reach for collective connection through metaphors of oneness and repeated points of entanglement. Each work aims to contribute to the collective in ways that speak of relations between disparate matter, the importance of care and ecological interdependence.
Exhibition runs: until Friday 8 August, weekdays 10am – 3pm
BSA Project Space: 112 Dalley Street, Mullumbimby, NSW 2482
