| Abstract | Last year I completed a meandering two-year pilgrimage on foot across Sydney, Australia, from my home in urban Rozelle to suburban Dundas where I grew up. Next year I will swim home. At a time of intense global flows, I had felt the need to re-acquaint myself with my ‘country’ — the seemingly bland ‘relaxed and comfortable’ mortgage belt municipalities of the Parramatta River corridor. Walking west from the city via Victoria Road I immersed myself in a suburbia laced with three generations of my family, seeking out seams of lost and lesser known cultural fabric. Whilst acknowledging the flâneur and the work of more recent ‘walking artists’, my path echoed increasingly with antipodean walking traditions: those of aboriginal people, early settlers, artists and swagmen. Sometimes my undulating and surprising ‘ride’ began to resemble surfing. At the core of my journey lay a search for memories I felt that I should, but did not, possess. Might such latency be visualized via photography?
|
