During the Covid-19 lockdowns in Sydney I, like many others, lost employment and was tightly confined to my suburban environs. I spent a lot of time reflecting on how landscape holds collective and individual memory and identity, and how often precious relics of heritage and communities seem to get trampled on in this city. 

Using found clay from four sites across Sydney: Kurnell, Pigface Point (East hills), Redfern and Malabar, the idea for this project took form in thinking about how I could integrate elements of place (the local clays) into works that reflect thoughtfully upon the site from which they come. Considering how uncovering layered histories might inform my process, and how each place brings something different to my experience of the world.

Excerpt from research paper

Much of Western self-perception seems to rest on Descartes’ solipsism ‘I think therefore I am’ (although, as Rosi Braidotti points out, ‘I shop therefore I am’ [1][2] may now be a more appropriate refrain). In contrast, an Aboriginal perspective says, ‘I am located therefore I am’. Kumbamerri [3] philosopher Mary Graham expounds on this idea in an essay on Aboriginal philosophy, which she summarises with two axioms: ‘The land is the law. You are not alone in the world[4].’ In this vein people are defined first by their relationship to land, and secondly by their relationships with other people. This ordering asserts a custodial ethic; the environment is not a backdrop to our existence, but something we have a relationship with and a responsibility to maintain. Graham points out that how we treat the land acts as a blueprint for how we treat each other, it is what ‘determines our human-ness’[5]. She says ‘the world is immediate, not external, and we are all its custodians, as well as its observers’[6]. 

[1] Rosi Braidotti, Transpositions: On Nomadic Ethics (Cambridge, UK ; Polity Press, 2006),3. 

[2] Braidotti is making reference to Barbara Krugers 1987 artwork, “I shop therefore I am” 

[3] Indigenous clan of the Gold Coast region. 

[4] Mary Graham, “Some Thoughts about the Philosophical Underpinnings of Aboriginal Worldviews,” Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture, and Ecology 3 (January 1, 1999): 105–18, https://doi.org/10.1163/156853599X00090,181. 

[5] Graham, 182 

[6] Graham, 193 

Processing clay is incredibly slow when done by hand. First the collected chunks are broken down into small pieces and left to dry out. Once dry, the clay crumble is placed in a bucket and covered in water to slake – that is, to break down and form a slurry. I often let it sit for a number of days, giving it the occasional stir. 

The slurry is then sieved to catch organic matter – sticks, rocks, and any other debris, and then poured onto plaster slabs to dry. 

Once the clay has dried to the right consistency, it's kneaded, bagged, and preferably left to sour, like a cheese.