Creative Methodology

D.134 Xanthorrhoea arborea (2021/22) is the 134th work in a series of materially and conceptually related works I have produced since 2002 with the appellation Draguerreotype.  Shortened to D, this acts as a prefix to the numeration of the individual work, assigning it a chronological location in the series.  By inserting an “r” into daguerreotype, the designation applied to an early photographic process, I take possession of the term’s agency from local and queer perspectives.  As a neologism, Draguerreotype evidences my commitment to working with divergent contemporaneity’s, particularly those that are marginalised or under-explored.

The Xanthorrhoea arborea in the title declares that the work is composited from stands of Xanthorrhoea, the iconic and resilient grass tree or Gul-gad-ya, an important cultural and utilitarian species for the Bidjigal and Gadigal peoples. Having the Xanthorrhoea as the artwork’s central motif is my way of acknowledging that Indigenous sovereignty over the land on which the artwork and stadium stands was never ceded.

I describe my process as “karaoke’ing the photograph” because I overwrite the chromatic and tonal properties of the photograph with a corresponding palette of wood grain textures.  Twenty years ago, when I commenced these images, karaoke seemed an appropriate performance-based proxy for my wanting to ‘sing along’ with the photograph’s indexicality.  However, to be instructive rather than poetic, D.134 Xanthorrhoea arborea is an expression of digital (or drag) intarsia.  Intarsia is a labour intensive, archaic form of inlaying wood that I choose because it allows me to theorise the manual as a conceptual response to neo-liberal capitalism, and to evoke the arcane as an antidote to stylistic and formal generalisations.

I developed a novel approach to site specificity for D.134 Xanthorrhoea arborea by crafting its palette from photographs taken of consequent wooden textures found in the Members Pavilion of the adjacent Sydney Cricket Ground; coincidently the oldest continually used sport’s stadium in the world.  In November and December 2021, assisted by Renjie Teoh I sampled the doors and sides of the changing room lockers in addition to the horizonal and perpendicular surfaces of the Pavilion’s celebrated Member’s Bar and Grandstand. These RAW files were treated to create panels proportionate to those of the plexiglass substrate. At the same time, Borg Manufacturing provided full-size sheets of polytec, the Australian-made low pressure melamine laminate applied as a finish to some of the Sydney Football Stadium’s interiors.  These were scanned at ultra-high resolution, allowing for the first time in these works a variation in the scale of the wood grain palette that could articulate landscape’s compositional tropes of foreground, middle-ground and background.   Combining old and new references to stadia in D.134 Xanthorrhoea arborea to link the past to the present and future, has always been an important consideration in my work. 

D.134 Xanthorrhoea arborea is realised in self-adhesive vinyl applied to the front and back of more than 61 meters of 3cm thick plexiglass.  The wedge shapes used to segue between the work’s passages of opaque or translucent imagery and panels of clear plexiglass deliberately echoes similar detail in the stadium’s outer skin.  The contrast between the opaque and translucent elements is intended to approximate the way memory fades or becomes lighter over time.  The white backs of the rear mounted sections of the image when viewed from the Parkside of the artwork repeat the white geometric panels dispersed around the stadium’s exterior.   In the same manner, the work’s clear or transparent components deepen the dialogue the image has with Cox Architecture’s characteristic use of voids and solids in the stadium’s architecture, while providing a substrate for the content generated through the substantive dialogue with Indigenous Artist and Curator Tess Allas.