Meeting Place: Birdsville

Where we find stone artefacts, this is evidence that people have gathered and lived there in the past. The Indigenous peoples have been living on the Australian continent for thousands of years and their stories have been lost in many circumstances, but these stone tools are evidence of their culture.

Indigenous peoples travelled the continent to meet up; there is evidence of this in the song lines and petroglyphs on rocks along the routes. Today there are still such “meeting” events and many Australians travel long distances to attend the Birdsville Races held annually in September.

Working in watercolour has a synergy with this ancient time frame in its method of layering. I take this even further with the use of masking fluid. In order for the white of the paper to be seen ,the outlines of the artefacts needed to be first masked out, then the landscape developed over the latent images. When the paint is dry, the masking material is removed and the stone tools appear from layers beneath.