The Drover's Wife, The Bush Hut, and The Dream - Still 1 (The Storm), 2023, Video
The Drover’s Wife, The Bush Hut, and The Dream explores the mythology of the Australian bush through the eyes of the female protagonist. The bush, frequently personified through Western eyes as being imbued with a sublime power, represents a supernatural setting beyond the conscious world, and thus the ideal setting of a fairytale. The figure, who represents the protagonist of Henry Lawson’s 1892 short story The Drover’s Wife, is the heroine of this story. As a lone woman on a remote homestead, she is vulnerable to the natural forces which threaten to burn her out, yet her only refuge is a rickety bark hut. She repeats the same actions from the story in perpetuity - fighting the snake, combatting bushfire, and enduring isolation and exhaustion. The structure of the home becomes the framework for transformation and challenges in its own right, equally as meaningful as the world outside. Set in a carefully crafted miniature of an early settler’s bark hut, and backdropped by the romanticised pastoral landscapes of German-born Australian painter Hans Heysen, the world created is as much of a time, as it is out of time, and of a place, as it is place-less.
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Isabella’s work revolves around the mythological, imaginary, and nostalgic.
Growing up in a bush property, she was cradled by the gum trees since she was a little girl. Isabella went on to study Visual Arts at Sydney College of the Arts, then travelled to Japan where she spent numerous years practising tea ceremony, koto, and flower arranging.