Artists statement

Found objects including rubbish (thoroughly cleaned), floral and faunal debris collected whilst walking along the Birrarung and Diamond Creek in Eltham were scattered over light sensitive colour paper to create this photogram.

The toxic haze hanging over 'Praiseworthy' in Alexis Wright’s award winning epic novel, informs this work and is used as the beginning point for composition: establishing a sensation of human suspension amongst virulent natural cycles that grow under, over and through human generated toxic effluvium. In both Wright’s and this work, untold colonial damage to place and culture are expressed as the result of racist and exploitive systems of domination.

The work stems from years of research in the expansive Escarpment project in which I have been working alongside InPlace director Eugene Howard at Garambi Baanj to investigate the possibility of artists working as active caretakers of place and navigating ways creative practice can nurture natural spaces to derive art materials. I engage with the Diamond Creek and Garambi Baanj ecosystems by looking and actively removing rubbish that are transformed into artwork through creative endeavour and processes.

Where previously I have framed landscapes from a distance using European compositional devices. In this work I am in with ‘touch’ place, that are also my materials, and look out from amongst it."

Of Anglo descent Siri Hayes was born on Boonwurrung Country and has mostly practiced on Wurundjeri Woi wurrung Country in Eltham, where she lives with her artist husband and two children. Hayes works across photography, video and textiles as materials to investigate the photographic paradox in which illusion and the indexical or physical connections to the real, coexist. She is particularly interested with creatively interrogating the slippages between these but is also intrigued with how materials can embody engagement with place.

Hayes has exhibited for over 20 years in solo and group exhibitions throughout Australia as well as in Japan, Canada, Finland, France and Poland. These include 'Photography: Real and Imagined,' 'Negotiating this World: Contemporary Australian Art,' 'Melbourne Now' and 'Stormy Weather: Contemporary Landscape Photography' all at the National Gallery of Victoria, 'Future Primitive' at Heide Museum of Modern Art, 'Boundary Line' at TarraWarra Museum of Art, and 'Contemporary Australian Portraiture' at the National Portrait Gallery.

Hayes’s work also features in over 20 public Australian collections including the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, Heide Museum of Modern Art and many reputable collections. She has received several photographic prizes including the National Photographic Purchase Award, an Australia-Korea Foundation travel grant and the Olive Cotton Award for Excellence in Photographic Portraiture. In 2008 she was a finalist in the inaugural Prix Pictet exhibited at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France an award for international photography that engages with environmental themes. In 2010 Hayes was artist-in-residence at the. Australia Council studio in Barcelona, Spain.

Hayes completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts (photography), a Graduate Diploma of Visual Arts and a Master of Fine Art all at the Victorian College of the Arts. She also works in higher education as a lecturer in photography and visual art at the Victorian College of the Arts and has guest lectured at many other universities and institutions since the early 2000’s.

Hayes is a member of the Paradoxa Collective who are four contemporary artists including Penelope Aitken, Anna Farago, Susan Wirth and Hayes that share an interest in peri-urban landscapes, connecting to the land through practical restoration and regeneration activities combined with site-informed art making who often use natural and found materials to create works that reflect on connections between places and people. She is also working onsite at Garambi Baanj alongside InPlace director Eugene Howard on the Escarpment - a multi-year project that investigates how artists might work as active caretakers of place and navigate innovative ways creative practice can nurture natural spaces to derive art materials.

Physical description

Unique state chromogenic photograph (photogram)