Digital Catalogue: 2024 Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Photography Award
Merinda Davies & Ellamay คงโรจน์ Fitzgerald
Sewing the Seeds, 2023
120mm film photography, pigment print on archival cotton rag paper
Image courtesy of the artist © Ellamay คงโรจน์ Fitzgerald
Artist Statement
Sewing the Seeds imagines a future where our garments are embedded with native grass seeds, utilising the human body as a collaborator and seed spreader, regenerating grasslands and acting as agents in carbon sequestration.
Introduced grasses have subsumed the complex bioregions of native grasslands here in ‘so-called’ Australia, covering the landscape in a blanket of endless rhizomes.
The image explores personal and imagined future memories of place, resewing native grasslands into the fabric of an abandoned quarry site. Sewn into the garment are seeds of kangaroo, top scented and barbed-wire grasses grown by the artist on Kombumerri Country.
About the Artist
Merinda Davies
b. 1992 Murwillumbah NSW, lives Gold Coast QLD
Merinda Davies is an artist working between Kombumerri/Yugambeh and Bundjalung Country using performance, installation and conversation to ask how we might reorient ourselves towards deeper care and intimacy. Davies' projects have been commissioned by Moreton Bay Regional Gallery, Arts Northern Rivers/Lismore Regional Gallery, HOTA Home of the Arts, Metro Arts, Institute of Modern Art, Blue Mountains City Art Gallery, OuterSpace and The Walls.
Ellamay คงโรจน์ Fitzgerald
b. 1991 Sydney NSW, lives Gold Coast QLD
Ellamay Khongroj Fitzgerald is an artist based on Yugambeh Country. Her lens-based practice spans photography, video and new media with an ongoing exploration into her dual Australian and Thai heritage. She has recently presented works for HOTA Home of the Arts, OuterSpace, Placemakers* GC, Metro Arts and The Walls.
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