Fact, Fiction or Somewhere in Between: A Hybrid Practice

I am a first generation Australian of German/Serbian parents and my practice engages with ideas and issues surrounding cross-cultural identity. The desire to create fictional narratives and spaces is a response to collected stories of a homeland, never witnessed, and based, instead, on memory, myth and fact. The synthesis of fact and fiction play a pivotal role in my practice, content that is informed and inspired by the aesthetics and visual language developed by18th and 19th century engravers and naturalist artists. The fictitious flora and fauna are constructed through a combination of digital and traditional print technologies. Reference to engravings and woodcuts stems from interest in the role of these early prints played in disseminating visual information through compendiums and encyclopaedias. They were the primary evidence of new terrain explored and this evidence was regarded as factual. Secondly, they imply a narrative, and due to their linear structure, enable seamless continuity in the juxtaposition of a range of disparate and diverse original sources. By coalescing the inherent properties of traditional print and contemporary digital media my prints propagate an innovative hybrid practice within contemporary print media.