‘Return’ is inspired by a slide of my family on the road to Mparntwe (Alice Springs) in the seventies, bogged after rain.

This work takes a small jewel-like record and in the process of enlarging extrudes and amplifies its essence. Playing with the icons of red centre sands, the road stretching as far as the eye can see and the Holden Kingswood. In this work I was particularly interested in the contrast of detail and rhythm. There is a sense of the distilled eternal. A moment of being for the central figures. It is a departure in bringing together my landscape and portraiture practice, as well as a consolidation of what I learned during an international residency last year.

It speaks to maintaining connection within the shifting sands of history. There is something integral to First Nations experience in the sometimes epic journey to return to country; but also a shared universal experience of going home.