This place has a complex history and is the nexus for my own life-long journey deepening my connection with my culture. This body of work came about during lockdown, being unable to travel there, I felt a longing for country. I will always return to this subject, just like I will always return to country.
With a delicate hand, Thea Anamara Perkins answers heavy questions about what it means to be Indigenous in contemporary Australia, and how Aboriginal people and Country can and should be portrayed.
Eight Views of the Telegraph Station is a personal meditation on the site known as the Old Telegraph Station in Mparntwe (Alice Springs), which takes the Western figurative landscape tradition and imbues it with the personal and spiritual associations of Country. Resisting the contemporary appetite for the “next” new and different idea - the series took inspiration from non-Western traditions of revisiting, most famously demonstrated by Hokusai or - literally closer to home - the painters of the central and western deserts.
