NICOLE WELCH - ILLUMINATION 2012

The Illumination works are photographs of site-specific installations in the Australian landscape. The works began when I was artist in residence at Hill End in 2010. The archetypal Australian landscape of Hill End that I encountered was overwhelmingly felt, along with the colonial histories imbued within. My ancestry is strongly connected to this region dating to pre - 1850 when they arrived to secure pastoral leases on an ‘uncharted’ land. These personal family stories, the broader history of the region and the European idealism projected upon this landscape became the focus of this new work. ‘Perhaps at first glance Welch’s landscapes appear innocent, seductive even. But behind the brooding forest, misty skies and the thick of fog, the vanishing points of colonial histories await our attention’ Veronica Tello Anachronism, Romanticism and the Australian Landscape Today: Nicole Welch’s Illuminations (2012)