"Terre Aborigène"
Hamish Stewart has been photographing since the early 1980s. During postgraduate studies in the mid 1980s he first began to explore historical photographic processes, ultimately choosing to work with the gum bichromate process. Since the mid 1990s he has worked exclusively with gum printing and has exhibited work in Sydney, Paris and London.
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#3#1 "Ellery Creek Waterhole" - 1/10 - Fabriano Artistico 600g NOT - 360 EUR
#2 "Above Ormiston Pound" - 3/10 - Fabriano Artistico 600g HP - 360 EUR
#3 "Above Ormiston Pound 2" - 2/10 - Fabriano Artistico 600g HP - 360 EUR
'Working with early print-making techniques offers a level of control and involvement in the process that no commercial method can provide. Preparing my own paper and mixing the emulsion from the raw materials brings me closer to the heart of photography - an intimate embrace between the latent image and the mechanical-chemical process that manifests it.
With the Gum process I have full control of colour, texture and tonality allowing me to extend my print-making language beyond the purely photographic image.
An ongoing interest in my work is explore the inner resonance of the landscape, to go beyond its surface and to investigate the layers of time, history and habitation that leave their footprint and memory on the land.'
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#6#4 "Creek Kata Tjuta" - 1/10 - Fabriano Artistico 600g HP - 360 EUR
#5 "Ghost Gum Finke River Gorge" - 1/10 - Fabriano Artistico 600g NOT - 360 EUR
#6 "Ghost Gum, Kata Tjuta" - 1/10 - Fabriano Artistico 600g NOT - 360 EUR
Terre Aborigène (Landscape of the Dreamtime) describes both a physical place but also a state of mind, an internal resonance with the land as a living, breathing entity.
The "Dreamtime" - the creation myth of the original inhabitants of Australia - views the landscape not as an inanimate space, but as a living enbodiment of the story of creation. The presence of the "Ancestor Spirits" who created the world is reflected in the shape of the land - its mountains, rocks, riverbeds, and waterholes.
The images presented here are a record of my journey in the land of the Arrente and Ananga people, whose ancestral grounds are in the central north of Australia. My journey travels west from Alice Spring along the West MacDonnell ranges, the south along the Finke river and finishing at a key sacred site for the Ananga - Kata Tjuta (many heads).
Brussels, september 2005.