Sian Hardy

My art-making is engaged with the possibilities of materiality and process in relationship to Country and place. Through this installation spanning painting, ceramics and textiles, I am exploring the transformations and uncertainties that I have experienced while working with, from, and on Ngunnawal and Ngambri Country, as a settler on unceded Aboriginal land.

Walking grew out of sketches and memories from repeated visits to a nature reserve in inner Kamberri/Canberra. My approach to colour, form and mark-making prioritises instinctual and gestural ways of working, creating material translations of my embodied knowledge of place.

Experimental approaches to mediums, such as the use of plant-based dyes and pigments and the altering of wheel-thrown vessels, become a way to relinquish control and engage with the agency of more-than-human worlds. Variations in scale and the interplay of form and surface encourage the viewer to linger, facilitating a meditative space of embodied engagement.