‘Heart of Darkness: Painting and the Australian self’ investigates painting’s capacity to engage with the cultural formations of national identity. Drawing on colonial narrative tropes surfacing in a variety of cultural texts, this project uses the ambiguity of painting to speculate on ways of living with, and in, Australian colonial history.  

My project comes at a significant time in Australian history, where recent events such as the Ben Roberts-Smith defamation trial and the Voice to Parliament referendum have had seismic impacts on how this country formulates a cohesive sense of nationhood. The war crimes committed by Australian Defence Force soldiers in Afghanistan, and the silencing of First Nations histories and perspective has been brought to the forefront of the national conversation.

Through my research I have explored how to use representational painting to drive encounters with these complex and deeply challenging issues. In tracking the trajectory of painting practices concerned with its limits as a mode of representation, my creative outcomes induce uncertain feeling states that rest on illegibility and not-knowing.

Photo credit: Sharon Baker