Collection Online

Seam
2005

Medium
coal, nylon thread, driftwood

Measurements
(a-c) 138.0 × 90.0 × 37.5 cm (installation)

Credit Line
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Presented by Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, 2005
© Julie Gough

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
Townsville, Queensland

Accession Number
2005.403.a-c

Department
First Nations Australia

This digital record has been made available on NGV Collection Online through the generous support of The Vizard Foundation