Summer Residency Showcase, Tracking a Lineage: A collaboration with John Booth | 2020 | Outer Space, Brisbane
Tracking a Lineage was an archival installation that brought together a range of older works by the artist and the paraphernalia from her father’s research-based recreations of ancient Greek pottery. Created in Queensland in the 80’s using native Australian clays and appropriated ancient techniques, her father’s work sought to correct errors in purely theoretical research by implementing Archaeology in Action practices to better illustrate the construction of Red-Figure pottery. Upon visiting museums in Greece and London, the artist observed that her father’s hybrid pots were a 1:1 – almost perfect – simulation of the ancient remnants of this style. This created an appreciation for her father’s expertise and a reconsideration for how her father’s methods have shaped her as a contemporary artist. Yet, this childhood history also creates tension, as it raised an awareness of the appropriated visual lineage at play in her practice. Bringing about the problematics of authenticity, cultural appropriation, fetishisation and the conflicts of engaging sympathetically with an ancestry not your own but one that is inscribed in your history.
Tracking a Lineage was an archival installation that brought together a range of older works by the artist and the paraphernalia from her father’s research-based recreations of ancient Greek pottery. Created in Queensland in the 80’s using native Australian clays and appropriated ancient techniques, her father’s work sought to correct errors in purely theoretical research by implementing Archaeology in Action practices to better illustrate the construction of Red-Figure pottery. Upon visiting museums in Greece and London, the artist observed that her father’s hybrid pots were a 1:1 – almost perfect – simulation of the ancient remnants of this style. This created an appreciation for her father’s expertise and a reconsideration for how her father’s methods have shaped her as a contemporary artist. Yet, this childhood history also creates tension, as it raised an awareness of the appropriated visual lineage at play in her practice. Bringing about the problematics of authenticity, cultural appropriation, fetishisation and the conflicts of engaging sympathetically with an ancestry not your own but one that is inscribed in your history.
Photographic Documentation | Anastasia Booth
