A Deep Connection to Namadgi
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Most Canberra locals are familiar with Namadgi, our southwestern National Park, and many would have bushwalked along its streams and heard wallabies rustle through its purple-flowered boronia bushes.
But how well do you know the ACT’s very own wilderness? The vast bushland of Namadgi has boundless treasures to offer those who move slowly and contemplatively along the tracks tread for centuries by its traditional owners.
This slow exploration was undertaken last year by artists Simon Cottrell and Vicky Shukuroglou during their 2018 Craft ACT artist residency at Gudgenby Ready-cut Cottage (pictured above) in the National Park. Simon is a contemporary jeweller who is also a lecturer and researcher in the jewellery workshop at the ANU school of art and design.
Simon Cottrell and Vicky Shukuroglou. Credit: 5ft Photography.
For 25 years, he has shared a fascination with the natural world with Vicki, a multidisciplinary artist and researcher. Together, they conducted research in the wild solitude of the park, as well as at the Australian National Botanic Gardens. In response to this experience, the two artists have created a quiet and personal body of work that reflects an intense connection with the landscape of Namadgi, and a yearning for a deeper connection between humans and the country they move through.
The exhibition includes a video collaboration with Bruce Pascoe, a Bunurong, Yuin and Tasmanian man and award-winning writer of Dark Emu. This video is a poetic portrait of the private life of the Australian landscape, and an endorsement of treading lightly as we move across country, as traditional Australians have done.
Credit: Vicky Shukuroglou.
The staff of the National Park are resoundingly supportive of this approach to co-existing in and with the natural landscape of the ACT. Namadgi Manager Brett McNamara is passionate about this relationship, explaining “We are not separate from nature but a part of it: this is not an innovative concept, but a rekindling of what our forebears understood.”
A feeling of connection to the natural world is evident in Vicki Shukuroglou’s hauntingly beautiful macroscopic photographs, which present snapshots from Namadgi and the Botanic Gardens.
These works give a sense of intense and emotional observation and speak of time devoted to moving slowly through the environment, open to its wonders.
Credit: Vicky Shukuroglou.
Vicki‘s compassion, curiosity and reverence reveals itself in her work as a multidisciplinary artist and researcher.
“I think of the old people, and what their minds would turn to. I think of their humanity, of mine, of yours. I think of what it means to tread on this earth so used to the pressings of soft feet, of the human animal, of every other animal moving across her surface and deep into her watery hollow.”
Credit: Vicky Shukuroglou.
This thoughtful and timely exhibition reminds us to slow down and immerse ourselves in the historic bushland at our fingertips.
As we move through our increasingly urbanised environment, it is both sobering and reassuring, but crucially important, to remember that we are human animals: part of an ecosystem that shaped our evolution and that we, in turn, shape with our every action.
the essentials
What: Cupped Hands
When: Showing until Saturday 11 May
Where: Craft ACT Gallery, North Building, 180 London Circuit, Civic
Website: craftact.org.au
Feature image: 5ft Photography
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