Performance

Autonomous Forest Drawing, 2021

Autonomous Forest Drawing is a ten-minute video artwork recording the gentle and transient movements of the forest. To create the work I set up sheets of watercolour paper on a trestle table and an easel within range of the trees and attached cartridge brushes loaded with black ink to the ends of their branches. The video includes still and film recordings of the work being set up, footage of the trees drawing as well as audio recorded at the site. The recording time went for about three hours and the final audio and video was cut to ten minutes.
The recording took place in a grove of Melba Gully, one of the oldest parts of the Otway Ranges. Some of the trees in this area surpass four hundred years in age. It is a significant old growth forest and one of the wettest parts of Victoria. The purpose of the work is to give permanence to the soft movements of the trees in this forest and to return autonomy to the forest which has been profoundly influenced by human activity.