Barbed Wire Balls

 

I began to focus on the use of barbed wire as a means of expressing my relationship with the landscape.

 

As I explored barbed wire as a medium, my life was unsettled. Loneliness, isolation and ongoing conflict were also, I realized, finding expression in this material often associated with hostility.

 

The memory and meaning contained in this material, perhaps more than any other common farm artefact cannot be separated from its remarkable history that inevitably contributes to the way we see it.

 

I made five barbed wire balls.The last, a 3.6 metre sphere, was placed on the landscape and photographed throughout the farming seasons.  In the end a massive storm rolled the ball across the paddock permanently transforming its shape. 

 

Like the different responses to the landscape in general, each viewer will view my work through their own particular experience of barbed wire.