Riparian Zone

Riparian Zone is an ongoing series in which I’ve been inserting my body into the environment of my local urban creek, the Merri, dressed in the rubbish, pollutants and invasive weeds found in its waters. The materials are collected from the creek and the surrounding riparian zone, made into a garment, and finally photographed back in the original location. The work utilises an uncomfortable aestheticisation of the human-induced destruction we would prefer not to look at. Its perspective is a convergence of ecological panic, environmental activism, the self-reflexive female gaze, and a reframing of Pictorialist and Pre-Raphaelite visions of women in nature. It is a visual response to feminist and post-humanist scholar Donna J Haraway’s exhortation to “stay with the trouble” of living on a damaged planet. These images were made on colonised unceded Wurundjeri land. I wish to pay my respects to their leaders past and present.