Description

Upon a country trip with my Archibald Prize subject this year, Uncle Roy Kennedy, I couldn’t help but observe the prevalence of ‘shield trees’ on the Murrimbidgee landscape. I set to task and photographed as many as I could and on the long drive back to Sydney arrived at this concept.

The idea was to grant the trees a distinct identity by personalising them with a characteristic face of a warrior.

Is it not fascinating that… with in course of the past 230 years a human being had used his bare hands to remove that bark in aim of fashioning a shield for which to defend himself.

This photo montage is the first of what I hope shall become many as I crave to distant Aboriginal communities to seek permission to create a further series.