Imprecise Speculation on the Happenings of the Bunurong Coast
These fragmented Polaroid/Prose/Audio snapshots capture fleeting moments, elusive characteristics and the transient allusions that abound on the Bunurong Coast. They are fusions that stand in deliberate opposition to notions of precision and exactness so highly coveted by conventional historical pursuits. Instead, these mixed-media compositions offer ambiguously textured snapshots of the Bunurong Coast. They are amalgamations that profile the beauty in imprecision and uncertainty.
In her essay “Making Not Knowing”, the American artist Ann Hamilton delves into the intricate relationship between art, creativity, and how practitioners engage with artistic uncertainty. On the inherent instinctual nature of artistic endeavours, Hamilton underscores the crucial importance of unpredictability, asserting that creative practice usually doesn’t begin with preconceived outcomes:
One doesn’t arrive—in words or in art—by necessarily knowing where one is going. In every work of art something appears that does not previously exist, and so, by default, you work from what you know and what you don’t know.
(Hamilton, 2010, p. 68)
This implies that maintaining an openness to explore, meander, fail and find aesthetically and intellectually engaging outcomes can enable exploration of diverse artistic paths. This approach recognises the richness of the creative process but also acknowledges that things don’t happen simply by chance:
Not knowing isn’t ignorance. (Fear springs from ignorance.) Not knowing is a permissive and rigorous willingness to trust, leaving knowing in suspension, trusting in possibility without result, regarding as possible all manner of response.
(Hamilton, 2010, pp. 68-69)
Embracing Hamilton's provocation, this collection offers a lens that values the inherent beauty of indifferent happenstance, the unpolished, and the damaged. It highlight's how those murky and blurred characteristics aptly reflect the lived reality of place – where messy complications, risky attachments and nonsensical connections abound.
These shots articulate a process whereby creative experimentation meest intimate and embodied observation. It offers a dialogue with the place through fleeting aesthetic snapshots and prose-based provocations. It is a speculative and imaginative form of creative place-making that tries to engage with unexpected allusions that present themselves when documenting aspects of the land, water, skies, and records of the Bunurong Coast.