Description

Death and history go hand in hand. The use of found skeletal remains, once a living witness to history, aims to evoke something of the individual and collective memories held within people and the land. Being moved by the passing of a young family member Tamara Whyte has photographed and filmed a number of works which contemplate death in the bush.

Bonescape presents three-layered landscape images taken on slow release under the light of the full moon. Fish, bird, and bovine bones, deliberately manipulated to take on different interpretive qualities, are buried in the image. The bones speak of past histories, a signpost to untold stories. If these histories are not illuminated, they are at risk of being consumed back into the land and the stories are lost. 

Tamara Whyte is an Aboriginal artist and writer. Her family descends from Warrgamay coastal far north Queensland and Vanuatu. She has a passion for stories that challenge and asks people to work towards an understanding of their own agency. She was recently awarded the inaugural Documentary Australia Foundation’s Indigenous Fellowship, for her concept Base 8. Base 8 explores mathematics embedded in the Kinship system of Central Arnhem Land.