Grabbing the bull by the horns
A few months ago I had 4 weeks off from work and spent that time making new art and doing publishing things.
Since that time something I've been wondering is 'when can I go shoot again?'. Having traveled 2 days to where I was making art work, and having to travel 2 days to then get home again, it's not exactly a location I can pop to for a long weekend. For a while I figured I'd just wait until next year to keep working on this project. I will have a break over summer, but the desert in summer is not where I want to be, with many places I was visiting easily hitting 40-45 degrees regularly there's just no point trying to make that work.
But I felt like I had good momentum - I don't want to wait another 12+ months to keep working on things. So in the last week or so I've really started delving into what else I can do and where else I can visit.
The project is looking at the Dingo Proof Fence and how a history of land clearing, agricultural mismanagement and native animal extermination has rendered a biodiversity hotspot in the desert quite barren. Now that most of those farms have failed and few people live in this area, it seems that we really should be thinking how we can tear down the fence and start giving areas of this land back. For context, the area of land that was destroyed and doesn't support many people or farming is about the size of my entire home state, Victoria. Or about the same size as the entire United Kingdom.
So - what can I do if I can't quite find the time (at the right time of year) to head out to this arid belt?
Well, I've started finding people who look after Dingoes here in Victoria and visiting them, photographing the animals. One of the issues is that Victoria (especially given it's winter at the moment) is quite green, where as the red dirt of Western NSW is quite a through line, so I'm not quite sure how we'll go. But I very much enjoy meeting passionate, committed and slightly off-kilter wildlife figures. Dingoes are also insanely interesting to observe.
I'm also going to head out to where the Dingo Proof Fence starts - the Great Australian Bight - in July. I can take a 4-5 day weekend and spend 3 days photographing, there's an airport just 2 hours from where the fence starts, and I'm going to have a good time camping and looking at the beach where the fence collapses off a cliff into the ocean. Sometimes Australia is just so fucking dramatic, hey?
In September I'm going to visit a researcher and photograph a bunch of his research. My practice involves finding lots of different visual languages - photographs, maps, archival photos, rephotography, etc - and bringing it together - so visiting researchers and photographing how their work (which is crucial for this project) can be represented visually will be a blast.
At the moment I feel really energetic, I've been having a good year and I want to keep things going. I don't want to stop or slow down because I feel really excited and keen. I know that these feelings won't always last (they come and go) - so there's this sort of imperative I feel to take advantage of the fact that I know I can push myself at the moment.
I'm also able to do these things as my new job lets be bank up overtime and take extra days off, and my boss genuinely doesn't care where we work from. I'm looking forward to trying to find ways to take advantage of this.
So, time to grab the bull by the horns and make a lot of work before summer hits.
A few other things:
Tall Poppy Press has recently released a new book - please have a look here.
I'm teaching a book making and publishing workshop in Sydney in September - please have a squiz here
We're in the final week of our publishing prize, it's open for 8 more days - if you want to submit you've got 8 days and if you'd like to tell a friend we'd be really appreciative