I am interested in the relationship between place and identity. With the advancing dominance of globalization in our culture, issues about our relationship to place are more relevant than ever. The search to situate ourselves in terms of parameters such as ethnicity, gender, lifestyle choices, career, status, generation, political affiliation and so on suggests our increasing anxiety about our location in the new world order. My work examines this relationship translated into a more personal sphere.

How does a particular geographic location, a place of personal significance intersect with identity? Sets of Circumstance (2008 ongoing) concerns two places of personal significance: the Manning River in NSW where I live part time (which may be seen as one source of my experiential identity) and the Maros (Mures) River in Transylvania, Romania where my family originated and which carries my name (which may be seen as one source of my constructed identity).

This work refers to the processes related to my first journey to and along the Maros River. The still sequence consists of photographs and video grabs, both clear and digitally noisy. They depict images of the two rivers, myself within these locations and survey poles hovering and sinking in the river water.

Each image pairing represents one distinct moment during the journey and relates to an experience or memory informing and reflecting on the experience of the other as I travel along the river. There is no chronological order to the series. This is not a narrative.

The juxtaposition of the images as dyptichs points to the interplay between each place operating as independent psychological ‘constructs’ or templates. Confronted with the physicality of the Maros, the experience is filtered by these cognitive templates of expectation derived from family mythology about the river and references which may contribute to the measure of my identity. There is, implicit in this journey, an expectation of engagement with this place: an anticipation that there will be a sense of attachment. Yet the images show me moving quickly away, hesitant at the edge or viewing locations through the mediation of a lens in the act of recording.

The yellow tonings of half of the images result when the blue channel is removed from the RGB colour space. As if the blue of the river has been reduced. Yellow is associated with memory and emotion: this lends a luminous and unreal quality to these images and the almost a toxic tone points to the idea that the venture itself or perhaps the memories that drive it are hazardous: there is risk implicit in this enterprise and there is risk in expectation.

The video depicts a sense of anticipation through the act of crossing. Here, the ferryman, who is in a sense, a representative of the local identity of one place on the Maros carries us across the river. This is the only place on the river we see others and our connection with them is fleeting.

The use of both video and still photographs, unfocussed and pixellated emphasise differences in movement and time and the subsequent perceptual instability of meaning. Does this sense of anticipation and disengagement mark the failure of a meaningful connection between identity and geographic place?