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Murra Exploration: Prologue

Crista Bradshaw - Mura Exploration Prologue - 2023 - At The Mill.jpg

2023, acrylic paint, canvas, frame, boomerangs, found objects, photographs, gel medium, stockings, thread, ochre, gyprock, crackling medium, paper, elastic material, variable dimensions (installation view at The Mill).

Murra Exploration: Prologue is a body of work built from a desire for reconnection. Bradshaw conceptualised it to capture the essence and multiple facets of her journey to reconnection with Indigenous identity and the Wangkumara Language Group. The combination of Expanded her practices and Indigenous symbolism and themes pushes the bounds of what Aboriginal art can be. All the Indigenous symbols hold significant meaning and recount stories pertaining to Wangkumaran history, family, and journeys of discovery. The works are an experimental investigation into artistic processes and what methods of representation can be generated. The collection of artefacts and photographs contain a familial connection and history, situating the work within a personal framework, manifesting an exploration of connection, understanding and research.

The body of work narrates Bradshaw’s findings, feelings, and the gaps in the research. It’s these gaps that leave her striving for more and what informs the work as a preface to further exploration. The limitations in the research have led to the work referencing themes of disconnection, separation, and rectification. Personal photographs and Indigenous artefacts are utilised as an attempt to fill in the gaps and further contextualise the work in an appreciative Indigenous discourse.

The artworks in Murra Exploration: Prologue were created using various methods and materials. These stem from Bradshaw's experimentations with Expanded Painting forms to portray the essence of her findings. She has worked with means of destruction, hiding, receding, tension and reconfiguration to create the individual works. These methods are used to attach a symbolic significance to the process of creation and to inform the intention of the work. Ripping the canvas demonstrates a separation from the old, institutionalised ideas of painting. Paint skins are an even further detachment, the paint is free from the canvas and frame altogether. There are Indigenous paintings that have been masked by Western-style landscapes. There are even reproductions of personal photographs, as paintings and as transfers, that reconceptualise the subjects of these photos. Almost all the materials used in the body of work are derived from Western society, and Bradshaw cannot deny that without such materials her works would not be what they are today without them. This is why her work collaborates with processes of expansion beyond the intended use of the materials. Murra Exploration: Prologue is an expansion of materiality, process, and knowledge. This expansion allows her to generate a dialogue of symbols, materials, and processes in their relationship with each other and the broader Indigenous methodology.

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Crista Bradshaw Contemporary First Nations Artist from Adelaide South Australia

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