Drifting In My Own Land

Nalda Searles is a living icon of Western Australian art. For decades she has been an innovator in the use of native fibres and found objects from the environment for the production of fibre-textiles, sculpture and installation artworks.

Her practice draws from the unique landscape of the West of Australia to express the contradictions of post-colonial identity and the complexities of her relationship with the land and its inhabitants, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous.

Nalda Searles – Drifting in My Own Land showcased new works created by Searles in an intensive period of creativity undertaken since making the decision to return full-time to her solo art practice in 2006. Drawing on her own life, memories of her parents and the experience of a number of regionally-based women she has known and researched, the exhibition was a powerful expression of identity in relation to landscape. The tour comprised a comprehensive collection of artworks, each piece standing independent of others but the whole reading cohesively. Materials in the exhibition included recycled clothing and textiles, animal fodder, hair, wax, native plant materials and other found and salvaged items along with photography, text and drawing. Animal fodder, a neutral pasture fibre which Searles used for several years, has colonial connotations which she saw as a metaphor for the fragility of the 'woman’s condition' and the very material which is the stuff of this particular life.