River in my mind, in my work

Exhibited Wagga Wagga Art Gallery, 13 May 2023 to 20 August 2023

In River Nathalie Hartog-Gautier utilises river landscapes to explore colonised environments and ecological devastation. Her experimentations with surface, medium and technique produces marks both subtle and intimate.

The river acts as a metaphor for time not only for its flow, so frequently we see the river in its quiescent state when it has dropped down and doesn't run much, just plops along in pools, but also for its history imbedded in the river, people with memories understand the water rises, breaks through, drowns, and brings chaos and disorder, sometimes food loss.

Over time, human interference with their natural courses has had detrimental impacts on the ecology and the landscape in which it survives.

The river system was a first connection with the landscape, the connection from the sea to the land and the starting point for exploration and colonisation. It is etched with the marks of Australia’s pre-colonial and colonial history. The marks of a sustainable and cyclical approach right through to one of brutal dispossession and ecological devastation.

Paper is both strong and fragile, vulnerable to the forces of nature yet it can last for centuries. Able to be broken down and remade, it is an apt metaphor for the work of time and the fragility of our environment.

Photograph : Andrew Haliday

Book 1 of 12 books, 100 pages hand-made raw cotton paper. 58 cm x 41 cm. Ink drawings, gouache, collages, digital prints. Typewriter text and relief print with gilding tools.
Photography André Fleuren
Bookbinding Barbara Schmelzer
Collection State Library of NSW

This work looks at past and present policies that different governments instigated to help or deny entry to people in need of a ‘Safe Haven’. This project is a reminder of Australia’s responsibility as a first signatory of the United Nation Human Rights Charter.
Over 12 books, I am bringing the stories of these refugees, often relegated to the margin of society, to the centre of the page. The books are presented in a barbwire cage alluding to the restrictive movements imposed on refugees.

In parallel to the fate of many refugees, drawings of the Australian bush and botanical specimens are referencing the First Nation people often equally displaced from their lands and placed in camps or mission.

I am forever grateful for the support given by Navid, Grace, Mario and Richard from Broken Yellow and Marta for believing in this project. It has been a long process and your positive energy has sustained me to keep working. I couldn’t have done it without all of you.

PDF versions of the books are available here →

Exhibited at Gosford Regional Gallery, NSW

My work is informed by my own experience as a migrant. I create site-specific works about the voyages of people and their interaction with the environment and the ecology they bring with them.
The large scale installations explore the intersection between place, memory and identity.

Photography by Document Photography 

Installation at the Coal Loader, Waverton, NSW
North Sydney Art Prize
Gosford Regional Gallery

3 Jarrah timber display cabinets, hand made paper, natural pigment, paper and coal casting, relief and digital print.

My art seeks to connect with the geological landscape by using collected charcoal and ochre pigments. It explores the idea of fissure and is done on similar size paper that simulates the same process of turning a page in a book. 

The casted water bottles refers to the leakages happening affecting some waterways. They are presented as specimens in cabinets as precious references we should not forget and saved as memory for future generations. 

The work “fissures”relates to the marks left in the landscape, the black coal against the white alluding to areas that should be preserved and our invasive imprint in the landscape, the ochre referencing the early connection of the landscape with aborigines and the juxtapositions with our disregard for it. 

Photography by André Fleuren

Exhibited at Orange Regional Gallery

All works: Gouache drawing on archival digital print
Size: 57 x 42 cm

My art practice, over the years, has focused on the concept of the voyage, its transformations, attachments and associations, especially when place interconnects with memory and identity.

In 2009 I travelled in Rajasthan when in residency in Udaipur.

My daily walks provided me with multiple scenes of everyday life such as the markets with the vibrant colours of the vegetables displays, the hand made baskets, cooked food and also the brightly coloured saris worn, with great elegance, by the women. The streets felt like they were Indians’ second home, busy with the crisscrossing of pedestrians, auto rickshaws and cars. Food seemed to be an important part of the daily routine with restaurants and streets food vendors cooking on the footpath or pushing along large or small carts. The workshops were open onto the streets, from tailors, jewellers to cobblers.

And overlooking the town busy life, the palaces with their imposing presence, glorious architecture and rich designs; glaring contrasts between life on the streets and their own opulence. Apart from the crisscrossing and the entanglement of the electrical wires, a reminder of the present time, it felt like moments frozen in the past.

Read more…

Photography by Lisa Haymes

Head On photo festival
Selected images.

digital print on Epson enhanced matte 197 gsm ultra chrome pigment.
Hornsby railway station and its surrounds is a hub connecting commuters from the Central Coast and distributing them across the CBD and into the demographic heartland of Greater Sydney (Parramatta and beyond). It is a vibrant place with a constant movement of passengers illustrating strong migratory patterns throughout the day and evening. 

 My photographs create a narrative showing this movement, using the same size frames mirroring the page turning of a book. They were taken over of a period of a few months covering the station life at different time of the day. 

The concept of photographing Hornsby Train Station is a continuation into my work on people’s journey; a train station is a place of transit, of arrival and departure, a place in between, a place of waiting. Hornsby has a strong population of migrants[i], of people connecting past and present Australian migration history. Photography can capture that fleeting moment of a train passing, moving onto another destination, that second in time, in a day, in a month.

Exhibited at Manly Art Gallery and Museum
Gosford Regional Gallery

“North Head Project” Continues on  “Of Global Appearance” exhibited at Manly Art Gallery and Museum in 2001. During that earlier project, when interviewing people about their experiences of being interned at the Quarantine Station,, there was often a stigma attached: migration with a disease plus a classification of migrants in two groups A and B (similar to the “other” and “us”), A for Alien and B for British, but they all had to go through a disinfecting shower and that room is one of the key buildings I chose to work with.

We are now still dealing with the old viruses and new viruses are emerging: Ebola, new form of the flu and the revival of epidemics in war zones. This is something foreign to most of us living in Australia and it could partly explain the negative stigma attached to migrants with contagious diseases. Because of the geographical position of Australia those viruses are perceived, in our mind through the media, as too far and yet so close. They become pretty pictures, micro representations looking beautifully abstract and disconnected.

To tell my story of the Quarantine Station, I have chosen to work with hand made paper: it is not only a surface on which to write and draw, but it adds the layer of memory of my hand casting the paper, reading like Braille on different surfaces. It allows me to record the shapes and details of the place, evocative of words; casted corrugated metal from the shower recess, bolts and nuts are punctuations of migrants’ stories.

From the carbolic acid showers to the dining room, where the first class passengers were served on a decorated Wedgewood dinnerware, I created a set of plates telling stories of viruses.  Their images as well as the drawings of the animals responsible for carrying those different viruses, look intriguing served on a plate.

I wanted the overall experience of looking at them not to be perceived as a threat but similar to the first mouthful one eats; it is only when you get close that you realise it is too late. 

Photography by John Lee

Winner Works on Paper, North Sydney Art Prize, Coal Loader, North Sydney. All works are hand made paper by the artists.

Collaboration Nathalie Hartog-Gautier and Penelope Lee

Black coal against the whiteness of the paper brings the question: can mining coal be a clean industry? It also highlights the fragility of the environment, white surface against black coal.

Background texts provide an additional overlayed narrative that refers to the issue of sustainable energies in the context of the Coal Loader installation site.

Photography by John Lee

Exhibited at Grafton Regional Gallery
Mary MacKillop Museum Project Space
Collaboration Nathalie Hartog-Gautier and Penelope Lee
Paper casting and de-bossing on hand made paper by the artists.

Imaging the Margin examines the marginalisation of refugees and contemplates our responsibilities as a nation.

It is in this spirit that we honour those who flee to our shores seeking a safe haven. Marooned at its border and relegated to the margins of humanity, refugees deserve more than a moment’s consideration. For so many, the search for refuge ends at the edges of a paradise lost. By offering a new perspective on the literal, conceptual and cultural space of the margin, we engage in critical and theoretical debate about memory, identity and place in contemporary society.

Handmade paper, with watermarked margins and imprinted texts, is the medium used to convey these concepts. Pressed into its surface, words bear silent witness to broken promises and lives lost at sea, while ephemeral images illuminate the contradictions between political and humanitarian values. Paper is strong and fragile; vulnerable to the forces of nature yet lasting over centuries; able to be broken down and remade anew. It is an apt metaphor for the endurance and resilience of those who so bravely seek asylum.

 Photography by John Lee

Exhibited at Bathurst Regional Art Gallery,
Macquarie University Library,
Burnie Regional Gallery,

Over several of my artist-in-residencies at Hill End, I developed this series of works as a direct response to the surrounding landscape. Its stratification, the colours locked deep within the earth and the traces and marks I encountered on the ground surface prompted this exploration.

I was given permission to photograph a drill core sample. It was fascinating to witness the way the systematic collection of samples placed in trays standing on trestles, represented a depth of 200 metres underground. I was struck by the beauty of these layers of earth normally invisible to the eye; I wanted to bring forth the efficacy of such seemingly simple measures.

The picket fences that peppered and framed the empty landscape of Hill End, I saw as standing guard to our past histories – occupation and repossession of land became a constant vision.

I would get up early to catch the morning light and at the end of the day felt blessed to see the sun setting just outside my studio, Murray Cottage. It inspired a series of panoramic works based on the idea of myriorama, or imaginary landscapes, drawing a line between the sky, earth, reality and imagination as the endless source of these various encounters.

I could not dissociate wandering and drawing. My drawing practice is about my different encounters with the landscape.

Hill End is a perfect drawing subject with its multiple fences in all shapes and forms, the Turon River, and the multiple remnants of a past history of the gold rush. it felt like writing in some sort of language and probably more so in the format of a continuous 16 metres scroll.

 Photography by Irena Conomos

Photography: Irena Conomos

Exhibited at Coffs Harbour Regional Gallery
Alliance Française, Melbourne
Orange Regional Gallery
Newcastle University Gallery

selected images
All works are gouache painting, size 18 x 18 cm

This body of work is about my aunt who suffers from Dementia. She remembers very little of the past and to visit her is like entering another world. I wanted to remember our time together. When I see her or think of her I attach images which, to use Proust’s expression, “will break the spell”.

My aunt doesn’t speak French anymore and from the new language she has created, I developed a set of poems based on our surrealistic conversation. They translate my emotion into written sounds and rhythms.

The drawings of geometrical shapes are a representation of the space we live in but with illusions and distortions translating the world my Aunt lives in.

I also wanted to remember the everyday objects that were part of her life: rubbings on paper such as the armchair she used to sit on and other pieces of furniture; a tactile and intimate photography of her objects.

I constructed fragile paper vessels made from cotton fibers, it dries like the skin: it wrinkles and they carry balls of un-knitted wool, holding its own memory and the passing of time.

They are remnants of a past life and the memories of things past. As Proust wrote, they become my trees, awaking, recollecting the account of our days together. 

Photography by John Lee and Nathalie Hartog-Gautier

Exhibited at Nexus Multicultural Art Centre
Swan Hill Regional Gallery
Tin Sheds Gallery, Sydney
Red box Gallery, Sydney
Photoaccess gallery, Canberra
selected images
Read the catalogue essay >>

Photography: Jane Allen and Nathalie Hartog-Gautier