Our memories are what define us, but what happens when they are shattered as a result of trauma? Memory’s fragility means it is subject to loss and distortion, affecting one’s perception of both past and present identity. My intent was to explore how the brain copes with suffering through a detachment from the external self. My personal experience of dissociative disorder has left me struggling to put the shattered pieces of the past together again. What is left of these fleeting and fragmented memories is presented to the audience as the sparse remnants of a stable sense of self.

Inspired by my studies of Bill Henson’s use of dark moody lighting, my original intent was to express the personalities and moods of my dogs in a similar manner. However, during some exploratory concept drawings with charcoal, I decided to work with charcoal on fabric and to extend and develop my ideas to represent our family as a whole, complete with moods, personalities and the strong bonds between us. I retained a monochromatic colour scheme but focused on the bright, more joyful and quirky nature of my world. The resultant body of work reveals the real bosses of our home.

'To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don’t grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.' Alan Watts

I swim during times of angst. I have discovered that water is like life: sometimes peaceful and comforting, sometimes overwhelming and imprisoning. In my body of work I explore feelings of intensity and awe, representing these majestic forces through chiaroscuro and negative space on scratchboard. Is every decision we make as unforgiving as a scratch on board? I watch the bubbles flowing upwards. Breathe.

All fragile beginnings brim with potential to be perfectly equipped for survival. My body of work is a compilation of drawings and prints exploring birds – their feathers, beaks and claws – examining how this potential can be fulfilled and how transformations and mutations may lead to the death of nature.

The perception of self is commonly associated with insecurity and our individual flaws. We often do not recognise our own weaknesses, and that the emotion that grips our minds is fear. This emotion hinders our perception of ourselves and destroys our inner peace. Incorporating self-portraits into my body of work confronted my own insecurity, exposing perceived flaws and imperfections in my appearance. By using chiaroscuro – contrasting tones of light and dark with the black background – my intent is to create a confronting space of vulnerability and sensitivity to fear, imperfection and anxiety for subjective interpretation.

After seeing the effects that the ‘Black Summer’ bushfires of late 2019 to early 2020 had on the natural Australian landscape, I felt compelled to explore this event. Through an abstracted style, placing particular attention on the blackened tones and scorched texture of the land, my intent was to evoke a mood of reflection in the audience. I worked with charcoal on paper, using actual charcoal gathered from burnt sites to highlight the physical and conceptual materiality of the medium.

My body of work is a physical exploration of something intangible – the hidden components of identity. I used charcoal pencils on watercolour paper to have the full spectrum of dark and light to express soft and dramatic forms with strong contrasting tones as well as subtle areas of gradation. This represents the hidden truths and layers of an individual’s identity with its many shades of grey. I used the side pages of a book to create the same linear qualities evident in the masked portraits, playing with the idea that ‘you can’t read a book by its cover’.

All Australians are affected by the harsh and diverse environment and natural disasters for which Australia is famous. The severe bushfires at the start of 2020 and the following floods which ravaged the Australian landscape had an impact on everyone, even those who weren’t close to the disasters. Within my body of work, my intent was to explore the ways in which these events affected everyone. I chose to do a large scale graphite drawing to incorporate details within the work that represent the physical, mental and emotional effects of these natural disasters.

When we reach the end of our lives, what is it that we leave behind that shows we were really once here? When we are gone, were all the years poured into our education really worth it? The Silent Cry of the Educated Dead represents the endless cycle of productivity over individuality, created as a result of the institutionalised education system. Is the value of a human life the sum of their achievements, or have we missed something crucial?

My body of work is an intuitive and personal exploration of the Australian natural landscape. The complex character of this environment is represented in the layers of rich and varying shapes, tones and textures in the work. Eco-dying is used to express this foundationally, as locally-found organic material imbues the paper with a distinctive Australian colour palette and unique, natural abstractions. Stitching and drawing similarly represent the landscape’s complexity in their integration into the papers; they express the detailed, textured intricacies which supplement the larger shape and colour of our beautiful, Australian ecosystem.

I am interested in drawing both film noir gangster films and birds, so my body of work combines these interests. I have inserted birds into various film noir scenes, dressed as characters from those scenes. I have used different lighting settings in the scenes, with environments ranging from well-lit to almost completely dark. In this work I focused on improving my tonal drawing skills. Over the course of creating my work, my skills and knowledge around effectively creating tonal drawings progressed much further than I expected.

As human beings we learn that suffering is inevitable. We are slaves to our own desires, perceptions and thoughts, bound by the transience of mortality. Each figure represented in my body of work is incognito, with the intent of creating an unsettling sense of ambiguity, prompting the audience's interpretation through personal experiences of restriction and/or suffering. Surreal objects are presented suspended in the air, appearing at once hopeful and vaguely ominous. While there may be freedom in humanity we are ultimately imprisoned by the foreboding force of our passing from this Earth... from the light into the shadows.