Odette England: Artist in the Outback
Exciting news! I have been awarded a six-week Artist Research Residency by the University of New South Wales College of Fine Arts (UNSW COFA). UNSW has formally appointed me as a Visiting Fellow, to live and work at the Imaging the Land International Research Institute (ILIRI) at Fowlers Gap, New South Wales, from May 1 to June 12, 2009.
ILIRI is a not-for-profit research institute that runs two Residency Programs at their Arid Zone Research Station, in the heart of the Australian desert. The ILIRI Research Resident Program is open to artists internationally with a proven record of high achievement and standing in the visual arts field, and artists must have a planned research project to enable them to work at the station.
Located 110 km north of Broken Hill, Fowlers Gap is a 38,800 hectare property featuring the stark rocky uplands of the northern Barrier Range dissected by ephemeral creeks flowing out across a shrub steppe to a floodplain of red soils. The average rainfall of 240 mm (9 inches) is distributed throughout the year.
During my residency, I propose undertaking a challenging new visual arts activity to engage, educate and enlighten viewers about the history, memory and identity of Aboriginal Australians, who were first discovered by English settlers to Australia more than 200 years ago. The project working title is ‘Visionary Geography', a term coined by French philosopher Henry Corbin, which is significant in understanding how Aboriginal Australians address the notion of ‘land' in its symbolic form.
More details to follow; in the meantime, I wish to recognise and thank the following individuals and organisations for their generous support of this project:
