As she enlarges the small delights of nature into dramatic forms, Maddison Gibbs is speaking political activism in a quiet, beguiling tone.
Her Gaia-like sculpture, Shedding Serpents, has at its heart a message against colonial-minded imposition on Country and impact on women, particularly Indigenous women.
It is a statement delivered via smoothened wood cut to depict the filagree beauty of fishbone fern fronds. Gibbs worked up the sculptural form from intensely detailed drawn studies.
"Just looking at different shapes and forms and spending a lot of time up close," she says.
"It's nice having time to do meditative practices and take time to examine things, how they're made up and the patterns in nature."
Gibbs chose ferns as an icon because they hold a cleansing role in the care of Country.
"All ferns remove toxins from the earth and from the air," she explains.
A Barkindji woman of the Darling River basin in far west NSW, Gibbs now lives in inner Sydney where she studied Aboriginal and Torres Strait culture at Eora College and went on to a degree in animation design at the University of Technology.
She says her artistic practice is centred on storytelling, so is open to all mediums, with occasional forays into digital expression "adding another layer to the story".
"I think I'll always go back to making, being on Country and using my hands," Gibbs says.
The title of the work, chosen from more than 30 finalists in the acquisitive $15,000 Lake Macquarie MAC yapang prize, references the Barkindji story of creation. It is also reflection on the way snakes are survivors despite the treatment they receive.
"I see the serpent as an immortal creative that will continue on, and will continue on in the land, the stories, the dance, the song and the art," Gibbs says.
She speaks of the serpent as a metaphor "for the women who have come before us to give us this voice, to get through a lot of suffering," and "our need to shed it, to get rid of it.
"I think it's healing in a way as well as trying to overcome."
Gibbs is seeking to make a point about our "very fragile" existence, connection to land and the treatment of people, current and historic.
"All living beings are so fragile and life is not held in enough importance in political and social (realms)," she says.
"The important things are just taken for granted, not celebrated, not protected.
"As a woman, as an Aboriginal woman, I feel it's my responsibility to care for nature and all living things, and when you're fighting against the tide it's tiring.
"I think about being able to celebrate small things . . . more than celebrate, action it."
