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This ongoing body of work explores the way that art and fiction exist alongside reality and come together to create contemporary mythology.
The paintings are inspired by visual connections between the seminal Australian film Picnic at Hanging Rock and news coverage of the wrongful arrest, trial and imprisonment of Lindy Chamberlain after the disappearance of her baby daughter Azaria.
Both cases deal with a mysterious disappearance in the Australian wilderness. The women involved have been variously interpreted as victims, muses, sirens, perpetrators and villains, inviting a consideration of the representation of women in Australian visual culture and how this might be reinterpreted through painting.
The works also consider how, as myths develop, individuals are distilled and simplified into essential or elemental versions of the female. The formal qualities of these works suggest the processes of repetition, expansion and contraction of fact, and the ongoing meshing of reality and fiction that contribute to the creation of enduring cultural stories.
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