Sally Anderson Nat’s Seatown cliff fall with Nik’s structure and McEvoy banksia

My work draws on intimate personal experience to examine the ways that meaning and memory are held in object, language and place. This work combines a Banksia ericifolia (found near my studio in Alexandria, NSW) with a screenshot of Nik’s architectural structure, Heather’s view of Bondi, and Nat’s image from the top of a cliff fall in Seatown in England. The deliberate recontextualising of these seemingly unrelated elements offers a way to experience them simultaneously. For me, the banksia has become a kind of ‘souvenir’ and represents my various identities: mother, Australian, artist, homemaker, partner, daughter. We planted a Banksia robur on my son’s placenta in our backyard. The word ‘banksia’ (after English botanist Joseph Banks) also holds clues to Australia’s colonial history.

Sally Anderson, 2021