catalogue of exhibition and public programmes

https://issuu.com/fionadavies/docs/carnival_catastrophe_2023

Photography : Ross Waldron

“Broken Songs”

Carnivale Catastrophe – Cementa22 Festival

‘Broken Songs’ was created in response to the catastrophic loss of bird life during the 2019 bushfires.

My work was part of a larger group exhibition called Carnivale Catastrophe within the Cementa22 Festival. Research for this project was instigated through an artist residency at Wayout Kandos,

NSW, where I engaged local Indigenous elders, Australian ornithologists and local bird enthusiasts in the Capertee Valley.

My work consisted of a series of large-scale, free-floating, layered acrylic paintings on sheets of translucent film. The films are traditionally used by cartographers but in my work were used to

capture the imprint the stains of rivers and local ponds in the Capertee valley as a way of directly marking time and mapping loss. The habitat of the Regent Honeyeater birds who once

thrived in the Capertee (before extensive land clearing) have been almost entirely lost. Imagery in my paintings combined birds, bodies, rivers, and fire cells together into hybrid identities of

catastrophic residue.

In addition to my paintings, I exhibited a smaller sculptural installation consisting of ceramic, charcoal, and wood on top of a vintage desk. A large terracotta bust of a mythological

forest-figure with a hole through its head sat in opposition to a farm boy figurine holding a bowl of milk within a broken landscape of burnt wood. Both paintings and sculptures in the exhibition

point to a need to re-examine our view of past narratives. I am seeking to explore through sculpture, painting and installations, new fragmented mythologies that question our relationship to

nature in a rapidly changing world.