Picturing Familiar Ground

My developing thesis is titled Familiar Ground: Expressing Post-Diasporic Scottish Identity through Collage and Print. The primary aim of the research is the expression of my familial history and of my own Post-Diasporic cultural celebrations, and questionings, of a hand-me-down homeland and imagined place-based identity. The topic is one of nostalgia, reflecting on my grandparent’s arrival in Australia a century ago and the adherence to Scottish culture pursued in the following generations. The visual component of my thesis is pursued through the mediums of collage and print, often using the appropriation devices of remediation and détournement.

The paper will background a pictorial language as is understood by the Scottish Diaspora and view it as a closed set, having changed little since the 19th century. I will reconsider these images and symbols in Post-Modern and Post-Colonial times, outlining the role played by Romanticism and myth in the picturing of a Scottish homeland (‘imagineering’) by the descendants of immigrant Scots.

My adopted home of Tasmania is one of misty mountains and secluded valleys. It has been fashioned on British landscape ideals. It is overwritten by Scottish placenames, flora and manmade works reminiscent of those in Scotland. I, myself, have nostalgically planted Scottish cultivars and raised Scottish breed animals on my secluded remnant farm in Tasmania’s south. Therefore the opportunity for the Tasmanian landscape to be misread is cobbled into my work alongside Scottish artefact, painting and print, the photographic and hand drawn gesture.