The name Nuenonne refers to the Country of Bruny Island and Wathaurong locates Country of the greater area of Geelong and in particular Ocean Grove. Methexis, a Greek term (and hence a western term) has been garnered to understand the performative power of Indigenous cultural practices. Methexis is understood as a sense of action, which encompasses performance that is not individualized, but has a direct relationship to the group and the commemorative act. Methexis is the performative action that brings something into being and existence.
Methexis emphasizes a physical ground and it is through this ground that Indigenous practices resonate. Indigenous culture is based on an ancestral history where various aspects of culture are not isolated. For example, there is no distinction between art, culture and living in the mediated experience of human beings. However, this mediated experience is from the other substantial plane or ‘space’ of Country. Our relationality with Country is vital to how we view the world. And here, world is a multiplicity- the tangible, the intangible, material, immaterial, physical and metaphysical.
This is why these works are Countryscapes instead of landscapes as a way to reiterate that Country and in this case Neunnone and Wathaurong Country, are living subjects as opposed to being objects. Land or landscape tends to convey the notion of object whereas Countryscape denotes subjectivity. These works attempt to articulate this plane of subjectivity, of agency, of a differing agency of the non-human.
My practice is an attempt to demonstrate this framework of an Indigenous understanding of the world and at the same time reveal the dynamic of what constitutes contemporary Aboriginal creative practices. I use drawing as an immersive and embodied practice and work in the form of charcoal on paper and on a large scale. The works are specifically landscapes that attempt to demonstrate the crucial role of “Country” (Land) and its importance to the foundations of Indigenous ideology and culture.
