Katherine Hattam
Home in This Strange Country
2021
book pages, charcoal, gouache on linen
185 x 185 cm
Courtesy the artist and Daine Singer, Melbourne
'Like many, I have thought more about home in the past two years, but also about the country Australia.
'It's being an island became central in 2020 to our experience of the pandemic. Last year our islandness seemed to immunise us against COVID-19.
'My painting is not of the pandemic itself but of how my thinking has been affected. I see Australia's strangeness, it's particularity.
'I remembered the impact the NGV exhibition Colony had a few years ago. The artist's representations of the unique flora and fauna in that show capture something of that strangeness. That world is seen from home.'