Honoured to win the 4th Noel Counihan Commemorative Art Award, for my artwork, Looking Closer which is being exhibited in the Moreland Summer Show, Counihan Virtual Gallery. Information about the artwork is below.

Dianna Wells
Looking Closer, 2020
Lumen prints on fibre based paper
100 x 100 cm

Looking Closer is an archive of photographic lumen prints created from endangered indigenous grassland specimens grown in my backyard in Brunswick.

During the pandemic my practice has transferred from site-based work to working with prints, made by directly exposing plants onto photo sensitive material with sunlight and fixing them in my darkroom.

I have found solace working with indigenous plants, working in solitude I have gained a reverence and respect for the grasslands as it once existed. A human landscape controlled by fire, rejuvenating annually over the cooler winter months, grasslands provided a habitat for native fauna and a food source for Victoria’s indigenous population.

There is grief associated with the loss of an ecosystem and with the lockdown itself. I believe that understanding resilience and recovery is the pathway forward in these times of change caused by bushfires, climate change and pandemic.