Christine McFetridge
Research Abstract
An Inconvenient Curve: Unlearning Settler Colonial Representations of the Birrarung
The Birrarung is a site of settler colonial violence. Since the settler occupation of Melbourne in 1835, the river has been, and continues to be, engineered in various ways to further white possession. As a result, representations of the river and river corridor in photography and policy have largely placed it in relation to imperial narratives of progress, ownership and its value as a resource. Only recently has settler colonial society come to see the river in less extractive ways.
An Inconvenient Curve: Unlearning Settler Colonial Representations of the Birrarung is a practice-led documentary photography project that attempts to chronicle the Birrarung’s environmental, social and spiritual significance. I aim to reflect critically on my positionality as a middle-class white woman in an attempt to challenge the aforementioned imperial narratives I’ve been conditioned by. I will explore concepts such as potential history and reparative aesthetics to do so.
Through photography, critical place inquiry and visual ethnography, I consider both my own and others’ artistic practices and theoretical writings to unlearn the river as a resource and to contribute another way of thinking about it beyond extractive terms. Additionally, my research is contextually underpinned by developments in Rights of Nature legislation globally, including the Yarra River Protection (Wilip-gin Birrarung murron) Act 2017, which addresses and defines the legal relationships between living entities and the responsibilities of people to the non-human environment. It is also informed by a broader examination of the tradition of landscape photography and its role in shaping anthropocentric attitudes towards more-than-human entities by objectifying them.
My project will result in a substantial photobook, comprising photographs, archival material and autotheoretical text, accompanied by a contextual dissertation that critically examines the relationship between (my) photography, the river as a living entity and community.
Bio
Christine McFetridge is a settler New Zealander based on unceded Wadawurrung Country. She is a photographer, researcher and writer represented by M.33, Melbourne, and a doctoral researcher in the AEGIS research network.
In 2020, McFetridge co-founded Co- Publishing, an experimental publishing project dedicated to celebrating diverse perspectives through visual art and writing, with Josephine Mead. Co- aims to promote local literary and visual arts practices, poetic research and critical arts writing. Co- Publishing’s second issue, WATER, supported by the City of Yarra and Collingwood Yards, was published in July 2021.
Selected exhibitions include Ground Control (curated by Alice Duncan), Richmond Town Hall, Melbourne (2021); Falling Shadows with Airini Beautrais and Virginia Woods-Jack, Photospace Gallery, Wellington (2020); Citizens of the Park, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne (2018); and The Winter Garden, Trocadero Art Space, Melbourne (2017) and In Situ Photo Project, Christchurch (2017). Photobooks include Falling Shadows with Airini Beautrais and Virginia Woods-Jack (2020), published by Bad News Books; and The Winter Garden (2018), co-published by Bad News Books and M.33 with support from Creative New Zealand.