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The clunky amalgamation of fragments of research material, unfinished works and process documentation which were presented in heavy based vitrines in ‘The ground, the air’, a survey of Anne Ferran’s work, may have come as a surprise to those familiar with the artist’s restrained and graceful aesthetic. True to Ferran’s poetic sensibility, however, the museological feel of this ‘temporary archive’ made a knowing nod to the artist’s ongoing engagement with various institutional records and photographic collections. Curated by Craig Judd for the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG) in late 2008, the exhibition highlighted Ferran’s sustained exploration of the gaps, blind spots and silences within the official archive. United by a specific concern with the institutional eye enacted on women and children since colonial settlement, the depth of works exhibited posit Ferran as one of Australia’s leading artists working in the historiographic mode.
Lost to worlds (2008), a suite of thirty photographs digitally printed onto aluminium, was commissioned specifically for the survey and has recently been exhibited in both Sydney and Melbourne. The series documents the humble terrain of a sheep paddock in Ross, which was once the locale of a 19th century prison for women convicts. Glimpses of a horizon line or snaking fence can be seen in the peripheries of a few of the photographs, in others slight indentations in the earth hint at structural foundations beneath the soil. Yet in most, the undulating landforms and grass are conspicuously devoid of any distinctive features, causing the image to flatten out into loose abstract patterns and forms.
Ferran began documenting the innocuous site 1999 and has continued to rephotograph it over the last decade. Although the uniform format... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline