Helen Sanderson's Ideas for Lost and Found
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Lost Traces I – V
This work explores the concept of lost/found relating to
land ownership.
I am an Australian artist. My work relates to the land
where I grew up. It is the land my grandfather selected in 1910 during the
early settlement of that community. His father had previously selected land a
few miles south in 1886. It is the land my father and his brother worked for
fifty-seven years. It is the land they sold in 1988.
I am looking at the ways in which we record and remember
that period of trusteeship of the land.
I am looking at how we trace back to find old records in
order to find information about our past, and we can lose all trace some.
In Australia we have the oldest landmass on earth. The
very age of the place is something you can both see and feel. Our past and
present are inextricably linked.
Some of the earliest written histories of this country were
written by a relative, and told the early English history of this place. These
histories are now being rewritten from a differing viewpoint, so some aspects
will be lost and others found. The Aboriginal history was not written, but told
through oral histories handed down through generations as well as through their
dance and art forms. Today there are people recording these histories so they
won’t be lost.
In this piece I have worked the personal, broaching a topic
that is more universal.
English/European ancestors from both my fathers and mothers
families migrated here in mid 1800’s and settled on the land in the same area.
Four generations of the family worked on the farming land before my generation
moved on to other occupations and interests and in some cases migrated away
themselves. In the scheme of the life of the land it is a mere speck in the
great ocean of history. For me this short history in this place is significant.
This is my sense of place. This is where my heart is. But we have lost this
place. It no longer belongs to any of us. I have found though, that ownership,
is always is strange thing. The telling of the story is all that really
matters, without that it really is all gone.
This work deals with this particular land. My great
grandmother Mary’s family recorded their history from a peculiarly patriarchal
viewpoint. Only the male members of the family were recorded…all women…female
children born into the family, or women who married into the family were listed
as “f”….for female. No names, dates or any information was recorded about them
whatsoever.
The woman in Panel II is my grandmother, Emily, the
daughter of Mary. I have used mapping to show the spread of humanity through
this area within two generations. The map in panel II is the 1886 map of the
Parish of Broadwater. Emily’s husband’s parents settled there in 1886 and
raised eight sons and one daughter. They were the earliest pioneers of this
district. The map in panel IV is a 1970’s map of Ballandean when I lived there,
recording the area just a few miles north of the 1886 map. It is where Emily
and her husband settled and where the home in panel IV is drawn. This story is
told in various published histories from her husband’s perspective. I have
chosen to include her here, but it is not just her story.
The textured panels I, III & V represent the all-pervading
sense of the continuity of the land. It also refers to the changes my family
brought to this land, in the form of grape vines. Having recently seen places
in Turkey where they have produced wine for the past one thousand years, I hope
the growing of grapes in this beautiful place will continue for generations to
come. The repetition of these forms also reference the repetition of the
seasonal changes of life on a farm, and the order it imposes on the land and the
people. The colours of the land reference autumn, and the impending winter,
alluding to the end for us of our stewardship with this land.
The inserted memorabilia within the recesses, refer to the
domestic lives of those who lived then and the histories are traced in the
books, some lost and some found.
* I am currently writing a family history from this period.
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