Collection Online

Observance
2011-2012

Medium
colour digital video, sound

Measurements
17 min 9 sec

Credit Line
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased, NGV Supporters of Indigenous Arts, 2012

Gallery location
Not on display

 

About this work

‘These floating necklace forms work for me as life preservers, that is, operating perhaps as memory retainers for people on the edge. The wood and the pumice necklaces – Drift and Lifebearer seem very much to be about returning home (to Tasmania) sometime. I feel I can (in my mind’s eye) walk into Townsville beach with these wrapped around me and float into the sea and wash up back in north-east Tasmania. The coal necklace – Seam – is like the weighty lifeblood of ancestry – the coal black materiality of the earth that I haven’t answered or perhaps recognised.’
– Julie Gough, 2005

Artwork Details

Place/s of Execution
Hobart, Tasmania

Edition
ed. 2/10

Accession Number
2012.213

Department
First Nations Australia