I've been here on King Island for a week now walking, talking and drawing, among other things! Walking, talking and drawing is the premise of my residency - to engage with this place and community through a process of exchange realised through drawing-based methodologies.
If you think of drawing as a form of conversation and exchange then many activities can be thought of as forms of drawing. As we participate in the process of connecting our interior and exterior worlds through mark making - whether that be with sound, such as the spoken word, movement, like walking, or through inscribing marks upon a surface we are engaging with drawing based processes.
Humans are, above all, fundamentally mark makers and drawers. It is how we make sense of ourselves in the world. Through this process of negotiation we enact ourselves in relation - to other human and non-human entities - drawing as wayfinding - as a means of situating oneself in the world socially, culturally, conceptually and physically.
Frottage on site near Currie harbour
This approach to drawing is what informs my practice and my investigation of place. While I am here on King Island my intention is to spend time with the community walking, drawing and talking to learn more about this place from those who live here. What is living on this island like?
My residency will explore how ideas of separation and connection define islander experience and will place emphasis on the unique perspectives that island environments and communities possess. I am interested in exploring coastal environments - the meeting point between land and sea - to investigate how ideas of separation and connection might be literally and metaphorically manifest in the environment.
So far it's a process of listening, observing and noticing. Spending time with people and place is integral to making some kind of sense of this community and environment, and with that myself, situated here in this place.
These are just some of the highlights from my noticing so far...
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