Petrichor

Image: Georgia Button, Petrichor, 2021, digital video installation, dimensions variable, 5 minutes, still 8. Image courtesy the artist.

Petrichor

Georgia Button
21 March – 28 July 2022

This work was nearly titled Look Out For Snakes. During our childhood, whenever walking around the farm, Dad would badger us to constantly scan the ground, on high alert for snakes. The product of this is a strange, ingrained behaviour of intently staring downwards while I walk, and an unusual appreciation for the ground. By filming the farm surfaces at close proximity, I’m trying to offer a more intimate appreciation of these surfaces – an opportunity to consider the characteristics, the history, the familiarity of the surfaces that are so integral to our lives, and the lives of those who were supported by these grounds before us.

The pandemic has forced us to deal with health issues in a way that is more isolated than ever before. With limited face-to-face contact, we need new ways to feel a sense of shared human experience. I am interested in the potential for my work to highlight shared experiences, evoke a sense of South Australian nostalgia, and acknowledge the significance of memory, home and place.

Portrait of Georgia Button. Photo by Sam Roberts.

Georgia Button is a South Australian based multidisciplinary artist, working primarily with video, sound and installation. Her practice is driven by an interest in drawing attention to the materiality of moving image media, revealing the camera as a perceiving body, and discovering how this creates the opportunity for an intimate encounter between viewer and screen. Her current works examine how particular devices within digital video and sound might speak to her lived experiences. Button creates work between her residence in Adelaide, Kaurna land, and her family’s farm in rural South Australia, Nukunu land.