Desert Forms | emmamacey

MA Project Work in Progress

Central Australian Rock Formations

Between 2010 and 2013 photographer Jimmy Nelson travelled to some of the most remote tribes on the planet. He used a 50-year-old plate camera to document tribe members wearing traditional attire. The images in his book Before they Pass Away (http://www.beforethey.com) are characterised by rich contrasting textures; feather against fur, paint against paua shell, textile against tin. The costumes reflect the surrounding environment; the deep reds and mustard yellows of the Samburu textiles echo the red earth and baking sun of the Kenyan desert and the bleached furs draped over the Tsaatan are like camouflage against the quiet white of the Mongolian snow. (For more research on the importance of colour click here).

Thumbing through the pages of Nelson’s book made it clear that many of the garments worn during tribal rites of passage ceremonies are not only aesthetically reflective of the environment, but they are metaphorically linked to the environment as well. With this in mind, I knew that I had to begin this project by recording my environment. This presented a problem; as a perpetually displaced dual national I was instinctively drawn to representing the Australian environment but the oceans and deserts of my homeland are alien to my British infant sons. The conundrum: how was I to craft a meaningful rite of passage ceremony for participants from polarised environments?

Sketchbook I Colour and texture studies generated in response to the Australian Desert, specifically the West Australian Pinnacles where our family travelled when I was a child.	Sketchbook II Colour and texture studies generated in response to the Australian Desert. This page was a particular attempt to use British objects and pigments to replicate aspects of the photographs I took during a visit to the Pinnacles in Western Australia when I was a child.	Sketchbook III Colour and texture studies generated in response to the Australian Desert. The small images are mark making experiments made using solar plates.
Sketchbook IV Whenever I work in the etching studio I lay kitchen paper over the bench to protect it. I did this one afternoon and then left for the day and ran out of time to tidy up. When I returned the following morning, the white spirit had leached out of its plastic container and dissolved the raw umber on the adjacent brush. The resulting accident seemed a better reflection of the desert than my own imagery.	Sketchbook V The rock formations in the desert are not rounded and weathered like the coastal cliffs that have been beaten by the waves for millennia; they often flake away in sharp shards.	Sketchbook VI I used a concertina sketchbook to abstract a rock formation from Western Australia. I worked quite intuitively and surprisingly, the barren desert gradually morphed into a metropolis.
Sketchbook VII I used a concertina sketchbook to abstract a rock formation from Western Australia. I worked quite intuitively and surprisingly, the barren desert gradually morphed into a metropolis.	Sketchbook VIII	Sketchbook IX
Central Australian Rock Formation After completing the concertina sketchbook, I felt more comfortable working intuitively to deconstruct and abstract my initial drawing of one of the Pinnacles Rock Formations so that the resulting image was not merely a figurative articulation, but rather a reflection of the nature of the object.	Central Australian Rock Formation I created a series of textural prints by marbling hard ground and white spirit on zinc plates and then printing in multiple layers. Initially I printed in olive green and umbers but the result was too saturated. I overlaid the initial print with white to mute the image; the use of grey rather than white somerset further desaturated the image. This seemed more reflective of the sun-bleached, salt-encrusted central desert where there was once an inland waterway.	Central Australian Rock Formation The colour and texture of the two-dimensional prints seemed accurate but as objects, the prints were insufficient for representing the harsh, recognisable forms of the Pinnacles. I sliced the prints into geometric forms reflecting the shards of rock and then slotted them together. The juxtaposition between then the muted colour palette and the bold shape seemed a good articulation of the rock formation.
Central Australian Rock Formation The first form is derivative of the drawing of the original rock formation; the second was a more intuitive attempt to balance the composition.

MA Project Work in Progress

Central Australian Rock Formations

Sketchbook I

Colour and texture studies generated in response to the Australian Desert, specifically the West Australian Pinnacles where our family travelled when I was a child.

Sketchbook II

Colour and texture studies generated in response to the Australian Desert. This page was a particular attempt to use British objects and pigments to replicate aspects of the photographs I took during a visit to the Pinnacles in Western Australia when I was a child.

Sketchbook III

Colour and texture studies generated in response to the Australian Desert. The small images are mark making experiments made using solar plates.

Sketchbook IV

Sketchbook V

The rock formations in the desert are not rounded and weathered like the coastal cliffs that have been beaten by the waves for millennia; they often flake away in sharp shards.

Sketchbook VI

I used a concertina sketchbook to abstract a rock formation from Western Australia. I worked quite intuitively and surprisingly, the barren desert gradually morphed into a metropolis.

Sketchbook VII

I used a concertina sketchbook to abstract a rock formation from Western Australia. I worked quite intuitively and surprisingly, the barren desert gradually morphed into a metropolis.

Sketchbook VIII

Sketchbook IX

Central Australian Rock Formation

After completing the concertina sketchbook, I felt more comfortable working intuitively to deconstruct and abstract my initial drawing of one of the Pinnacles Rock Formations so that the resulting image was not merely a figurative articulation, but rather a reflection of the nature of the object.

Central Australian Rock Formation

Central Australian Rock Formation

Central Australian Rock Formation

The first form is derivative of the drawing of the original rock formation; the second was a more intuitive attempt to balance the composition.