Craft ACT Artist-in-residence 2018: Cupped Hands

EXHIBITION REVIEW
Written by Isabelle Mackay-Sim
Most Canberra locals are familiar with Namadgi, our
southwestern national park, and many would have
bushwalked along its streams and heard wallabies
rustle through its purple-flowered boronia bushes.
But how well do you know the ACT’s very own
wilderness? The vast bushland of Namadgi has
boundless treasures to offer those who move slowly
and contemplatively along the tracks tread for
centuries by its traditional owners.
This slow exploration was undertaken last year by
artists Simon Cottrell and Vicky Shukuroglou during
their 2018 Craft ACT artist residency at Gudgenby
Ready-Cut Cottage in the National Park. Simon is
a contemporary jeweller who is also a lecturer and
researcher in the jewellery workshop at the ANU
school of art and design.
For 25 years, he has shared a fascination with the
natural world with Vicki, a multidisciplinary artist
and researcher. Together, they conducted research
in the wild solitude of the park, as well as at the
Australian National Botanic Gardens. In response to
this experience, the two artists have created a quiet
and personal body of work that reflects an intense
connection with the landscape of Namadgi, and a
yearning for a deeper connection between humans
and the country they move through.
The exhibition includes a video collaboration with
Bruce Pascoe, a Bunurong, Yuin and Tasmanian man
and award-winning writer of Dark Emu. This video is
a poetic portrait of the private life of the Australian
landscape, and an endorsement of treading lightly as
we move across country, as traditional Australians
have done.
A feeling of connection to the natural world is
evident in Vicki Shukuroglou’s hauntingly beautiful
macroscopic photographs, which present snapshots
from Namadgi and the Botanic Gardens.
These works give a sense of intense and emotional
observation and speak of time devoted to moving
slowly through the environment, open to its
wonders.
Vicki‘s compassion, curiosity and reverence reveals
itself in her work as a multidisciplinary artist and
researcher.
“I think of the old people, and what their minds
would turn to. I think of their humanity, of mine, of
yours. I think of what it means to tread on this earth
so used to the pressings of soft feet, of the human
animal, of every other animal moving across her
surface and deep into her watery hollow.”
This thoughtful and timely exhibition reminds us
to slow down and immerse ourselves in the historic
bushland at our fingertips.
As we move through our increasingly urbanised
environment, it is both sobering and reassuring,
but crucially important, to remember that we are
human animals: part of an ecosystem that shaped
our evolution and that we, in turn, shape with our
every action.
Originally published on HerCanberra.
The staff of the National Park are resoundingly
supportive of this approach to co-existing in and
with the natural landscape of the ACT. Namadgi
Manager Brett McNamara is passionate about this
relationship, explaining “We are not separate from
nature but a part of it: this is not an innovative
concept, but a rekindling of what our forebears
understood.”
Page 38-39: Namadgi National Park. Photo: 5 Foot Photography
Opposite & page 42-45: Cupped hands exhibition at Craft ACT, 2019.
Photos: 5 Foot Photography
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