Cost of A$1 dollar; the four sided note

Bowness Prize 2023

Cost of A$1 dollar; the four sided note 2022

Gelatin Silver Print 200 × 50 CM Unique State Print | from the series: Subterranean Artefacts

Torn $1 note from my subterranean artifacts.

The original artwork by David Malangi – Mortuary feasts of Gurrmirringu, the great ancestral hunter 1963, was copied by the Reserve Bank in 1966 without the artists consent prompting the first Aboriginal copyright dispute.

A year later he was awarded A$1,000 dollars a medallion & a fishing kit.

Subterranean Artifacts

We build our lives upon the layers of carbonized and un-carbonized human waste, marking our history with our refuge while adding to the earth’s time capsule. I see un-carbonized human waste as foreign fossils. I’m continually collecting them and fantasizing about their life span, to whom they may have belonged to & the stories they hold bringing the past to light.

The repositioning of these artifacts from darkness of the earth into my enlargers negative carrier to be printed reveals various details hidden to the human eye, this intervention and assemblage automatically transforms these fossils into relics revealing the sacredness and integrity of form as the primordial logos of our experience.

I utilize traditional analogue techniques in this process and out of date vintage paper from my collection.