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Interview : SHARON WEST

Anabelle Lacroix: This exhibition highlights your relationship to local history, especially the colonial history of the region and Bundoora in particular. What is your relationship to the Darebin municipality?

Sharon West: I have had an ongoing interest in the history of the Darebin area since childhood. I grew up in Reservoir and was fascinated by neighbouring Mt Cooper and its high hills which provided a fantastic view of Melbourne. Mt Cooper, as an extinct volcano, caught my imagination and as a child I would try to climb it from the western side. It is a place of great cultural significance, as a site of an Aboriginal stone quarry and scarred trees. The Merri Creek also held my interest historically, as the proposed site where the Batman Treaty was signed.

I have been involved in a number of exhibitions at Bundoora Homestead Art Centre, which encouraged me to continue exploring themes connected to Darebin. I received an award at the 2002 Darebin Art Show with an imagined painting of Mt Cooper before settlement. In 2008, I was invited to participate in Bundoora Homestead Art Show, in which I exhibited paintings referencing the ghost horse of the Homestead.

I have had a studio in Northcote since 1993. Before Bundoora Homestead became a gallery I was involved in various City of Darebin community art exhibitions and festivals based at the Northcote Town Hall. I’m thrilled to have a residency at Bundoora Homestead Art Centre this year, continuing to be part of Darebin’s large and vibrant arts community. Bundoora Homestead Art Centre has also been very supportive of the Indigenous Arts Unit that I teach at RMIT University, Bundoora West Campus, with the annual NAIDOC week show featuring students work in the Access Gallery.

AL: What is your interest in working with colonial narratives?

SW: Local histories are often overlooked by settler heritage artists and I’m particularly interested in the aspects of Settler-Indigenous relationships. In my practice these relationships are usually imagined. My invented histories involve hybrid and fantastic creatures; they enable a sense of playfulness and freedom that I hope entertains the viewer but also shows the absurdity of European colonisation. I play with colonial exploration, namely the act of settling and imposing foreign animals, structures, customs and morals onto the landscape. ‘Imperialism’ is also an interest for me, looking at how British and French colonialism shaped the cult of the Noble Savage. I also play with the amusement of explorers such as James Cook, Matthew Flinders and Nicholas Baudin towards the strangeness of the land and its creatures, as well as their need for collecting and the formation of curiosity cabinets.

AL: You are inspired by early Australian landscape artists. For you, who are the most important artists and why?

SW: I admire the romantic attributes of John Glover (1767-1849) and Eugene von Guérard (1811-1901) for their use of picturesque devices to achieve a well-balanced landscape, although they are idealised views. Glover’s perspective with figures, usually resting in the foreground, is a device I use in my work. His painting, Mills Plain (1836), is of interest, featuring a camp of aboriginal people dwarfed by a large gum tree with graduating rolling hills in the distance. I look at this work and imagine Bundoora and its environs stretching out to the Plenty Ranges.

von Guérard has mostly depicted Victoria’s Western district. I’m familiar with these places through the landscape work of Gunditjmara Elders, many of whom I have worked with through RMIT’s Indigenous Arts Unit. von Guérard was an immigrant artist who sometimes painted the Aboriginal people in his landscapes - ancestors of these Elders – even though they were already taken out of their land, residing on missions.

I am also interested in the manner in which these artists placed their Aboriginal subjects, usually seated under large gum trees and camped out in the foreground of the picture plane. I have used this pictorial device within my own work as a suggestion of Aboriginal people appearing on the periphery of the view and silently watching over the gradual changes to their lands. My works also feature Aboriginal subjects who look on in bemusement at settler and explorer figures interacting with hybrid and fantastic creatures. Occasionally, I depict Aboriginal people as shepherds and owners of some of these creatures or as domesticated pets, surrounded by playful Aboriginal children. I admire Glover and von Guérard artworks for their use of light, colour and perspective but also for their historical importance in terms of offering a record of the landscape and depicting Indigenous inhabitants.

I am also inspired by Wilbraham Frederick Evelyn Liardet (1799-1878), especially his watercolours of early Melbourne and notably the View of Melbourne – Port Phillip (1846). This image of Port Phillip, made into an engraving by J.W. Lowry, has been a key reference point to many of my works in terms of depicting the northern side of the Yarra and the building of a new city. Liardet’s works function as historical narratives in the formation of early Melbourne depicting John Batman’s house and Aboriginal prisoners escaping from Melbourne’s first gaol. In other paintings, the manner in which Liardet has depicted a camp of Aboriginal people in the foreground as some sort of pastoral idyll is also a theme I explore in my paintings. Self-Portrait as a colonist in early Melbourne (2012) is inspired by Liardet’s panorama work. In this scene I have positioned myself seated on the southern bank of the Yarra surrounded by two Koori children signifying the original inhabitants of the river bank, and fantastic animals alluding to the European fashion of keeping exotic pets. As in Liardet’s paintings, this work is intended as a visual record of early Melbourne, although I have deliberately over costumed myself, highlighting the contradiction of settlers continuing to wear their heavy European clothing in the hot Australian climate. I have also incorporated Liardet’s use of space by devising a flat and high horizon featuring a landscape cleared of its natural attributes to make way for westernised dwellings.

Another influence is convict artist Jospeh Lycett (1774–1825). I am interested in the manner in which Lycett presents a landscape that is governed by visual propaganda promoting a successful and burgeoning colony. My favourite work is The residence of Edward Riley Esq., Woolloomooloo, near Sydney, N.S.W. (1825), which has a promenading couple overlooking their estate while a group of Aborigines camp in the middle ground. The new architecture juxtaposed with the camp first gave me the idea of depicting the old land with the new land. Lycett chose the most appealing view to suggest a landscape pleasantly contained by neat and balanced features. I consider this artifice in the construction of my landscapes providing a sense of play; often presenting unexpected scenarios such as the appearance of grazing giant yowies or curious giant budgies. My paintings suggest that the existence of these creatures means that the land is yet to be fully tamed. An aspect of Indigenous nature still holds court over the invader.

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