Flat Impressions

Following from scholars such as Renfrew (2003), Schneider and Wright (2005), and Sansi (2015), Katie and Ursula seek to explore the potential of art–archaeology/art–anthropology approaches in their collaborative work, in an effort to make sense of the worlds we inhabit. This artwork relates particularly to their previous collaborations, Love on the Rocks (2016) and Talking to Strangers (2016), which also utilise fragments and found materials as a means of questioning how we value the fabric of our physical and cultural environment.

In Flat Impressions Katie and Ursula collected direct physical impressions of the exterior surfaces of Canberra's Northbourne Flats, as well as plant cuttings from the surrounding garden beds at the time that the final residents were being vacated. Their understanding of the site was informed by Katie’s MPhil fieldwork
at Northbourne Community Centre, where over a six-month period she regularly visited the Centre as a ‘participant-observer’ as well as sketching, photographing and conducting archival research. Ursula concurrently experimented with the materiality of surfaces and texture through clay and photography as part of her ARC DECRA Project (DE170101351), which explores creative practice as a mode of heritage engagement. The artists’ interests come together in this work to draw attention to the overlooked aesthetics of the exposed river aggregate walls, and soon-to-be-lost localised ecologies. In their efforts to retrieve structural elements of a lived environment – what was a home – for a community of people,
they suggest that we can only gain glimpses of what relocation actually means.