Stratification: site specific work

Exploring site specific work in Oatlands, Tasmania in January 2023, my work became more personal than ever as the profound historical record preserved in the buildings, museums and stories of Oatlands prompted an exploration of how Australia was colonized by the British.  Brutish - genocidally so to Tasmanian tribal peoples, the past has never been so close for me.  Staying in a fully restored and shingled sandstone building from the 1840s, feeling the stones quarried by convict hands, reading the stories told and untold… how do I take all of this and make it about music? 

I started with the idea of layering.  Sandstone is formed by layers of silt, and within the town limits you could still sit in sandstone overhangs unchanged by settlement.  Sandstone was in abundance and contributed to the decision to build at that site, as well as use convict labour to build a military precinct and in particular the courthouse featured in both Stone by Stone and Rule By Law.  Layering seemed to suggest the use of the loop station.  The lost kin, and the lost voices of the dead suggested to me the Irish mythological figure of the Selkie, the women who could change form from seal to woman but in legend were always having their skins (their identities) stolen by men who wanted to keep them away from the sea.  It also ties into another one of my interests - Where did that Celtic heritage go in this new landscape?  Where did the old songs go?  How does that heritage sit within this context of exploring identity and colonization?