2009

Undercurrents investigates different ways of combining entire photographic imagery to express a shifting sense of place. The series is based on Bribie Island, where pine plantations are being discontinued, giving way to National Park. The lure of the pine forest continues in visual art, although, here, plantations can be seen as an invasion of the landscape. Undercurrents is focused on the development of a new canal estate, and on the survival of peripheral native landscapes. Imagery is constructed to express the interplay of real and imagined layers of built and natural environments. As a canal estate is being built, the land is excavated and filled, erasing natural landscape. Although there are ways to build more compatibly with the land and its vegetation, the imagery is not satirical; it allows ambivalence. In several of these images the native landscape is a metaphor for fire. Wholesale clearing is contrary to the conservation of the region, but the impulse to clear native landscape for the safety and security of housing can be understood. New residents seek security in a ‘whisper- quiet’ estate, but there is an undercurrent of anxiety. On Bribie Island, the foreshores, trees and heathlands are still out there, in reserves, and Undercurrents is optimistic about the resilience of landscape.

Lindy Wissler

Lindy Wissler has just completed a Bachelor of Photography with Honours at Griffith University, Queensland College of Art. She has worked in architecture, landscape planning and heritage studies. This underpins the current strand of her photographic art practice which shows a critical familiarity with the house-building, foreshores, and hinterlands of our region, through their constant changes.