Sally Bourke THE QUICK BROWN FOX

Artist Statement

Travelling in remote areas as a child taught me to look carefully. The places I went felt isolating and, at times, dangerous. I used to tag along on hunting trips with my dad in order to be closer to him. Experiences in the Australian bush had a profound effect on my visual language and mark-making. The landscape in Western NSW is brutal and beautiful, soaked in deep human cultures that are precariously perched on top, at times not understanding the depth of what they are in.

I wanted to be in my dad’s company, but I knew the deal: It meant being captive to the environment, while simultaneously up against death. It’s one of the places that keeps drawing me back, to blind faith, and the human condition – the dark bargain of intimacy.

The portraits are different versions of the same protagonist. The huntress and her counterparts, a domestic interior, a room of one’s own.