These Central Bodies

Land and boundaries play a prominent part in the narratives of groundwater. Water, in all its forms, has shaped, mapped, and determined locations of the colonised and Indigenous land histories. For instance, the stock routes throughout Australia, which are a continuum of historical and present-day routes/tracks/roads used by Indigenous peoples, explorers, surveyors, pastoralists and others, link water sources. This continuum underlies a large part in the graphical and conceptual mark-making in my practice.

These Central Bodies is a collection of recent works initiated by a drawing trip to Western Queensland and a residency at House Conspiracy, where the artist developed the sculptural paper works in the domestic space of a Brisbane suburban house. The purpose is to bring the artist’s corporeal experience of the ancient water source into everyday spaces, revealing human relationships to the water and land bodies as central to communities’ spiritual, physical and economic sustainability.

Jude Taggart Roberts