Between the lines : the reading and re-imagination of landscape as text

The project was a site-specific exploration of the Northern Midlands agricultural property of Oakdene, which became a vehicle to investigate hybrid forms of art practice and intersecting narratives relating to landscape. The Midland region of Tasmania is a tapestry of private farmland and Oakdene was selected as having representative qualities of the greater Midlands ecology. Moving between riparian, pastoral and forest spaces across 4000 acres, the project observed human/non-human transformation in a highly contested landscape. Considering the agricultural landscape as text, the project sought to develop suitable methodologies for navigating and responding to continuous change within the boundaries of the property. Through a constant process of revisitation, walking emerged as my primary mode of engagement, and developed into a methodology for experiencing, mapping, recounting, reframing, and retelling the Oakdene landscape(s). I found working across different mediums to be the most appropriate way of negotiating the tensions between natural ecologies and human intervention revealed over time. Through a myriad of on and off-site studio experiments I explored means of landscape representation using photography, sculpture, and video in response to the fluctuating aspects of the site. Oakdene emerged as an example of ecology under strain, containing intersecting narratives that became central to my investigations. The outcome is a series of speculative works generated by a confrontation with the limits of singular approaches to making and landscape representation, arising from an unexpectedly dynamic Midland environment.