Artists statement

"This artwork juxtaposes the past with the present. The new estate of Mt. Cooper and its variety of modern housing styles is depicted alongside the encampment of the land’s traditional owners who used the site as a quarry. Mt. Cooper was also part of my childhood, in which I would climb to the water tower from the Reservoir side in a quest to discover what was on the other side. My artwork serves as an appropriation of the history of the Australian landscape in a mode that has the pre-colonial past overlayed with the post-colonial present. As an interchange of time and place, the settler past is imagined in the present, while acknowledging an underlying Indigenous heritage." - Sharon West

Artist Bio
Sharon West is a local Darebin artist with a studio in Northcote who practices principally in the mediums of painting, assemblage and digital media. Since 1999 she has taught visual arts in the School of Art at RMIT University. In 2009, West completed her Masters of Art at RMIT University examining the relationship between settler and Indigenous cultures within the context of Australian colonial art history.

She is the recipient of various awards including the Excellence in Conceptual Photography Award Kodak Salon (CCP, 2011) Bendigo Bank Emerging Award for the ANL Maritime Art Awards (Mission to Seafarers, 2011), and winner of the Darebin Art Show (2011). Her artwork is held in public collections including the State Library of Victoria, City of Melbourne and the Museum of the British Empire (UK) as well as many private collections.