Presnet absense

My practice has engaged closely with the book: Aboriginal Words and Place Names by A.W. Reed. Its pages include small illustrations accompanying selected words, depicting Aboriginal objects such as dillybags. These images attempt to represent Aboriginal material culture but are generic, detached from the specific cultural knowledge and makers they reference.

During my 2025 residency at Megalo Print Studio in Canberra, I created my first etching, tracing an image of a dillybag of Larrakia provenance held in the Queensland Museum. Even here, where the object’s origin is known, the maker remains unrecorded, a common absence in museum catalogues.

In leu of an artist name and signature in the corner of the etching, is a collage made from the book’s original dillybag illustration, repeatedly hole-punched and arranged as fragments falling away. The holes point to gaps in the archive and the labour First Nations people undertake to piece together histories scattered through colonial records.