Artist: Alana Hampton

Title: The Unexpected Nature of the Gold Coast Pt. 1

Curator: Donald Williams, Global Art Projects

Sofitel Gold Coast Broachbeach

These amazingly detailed pieces integrate ideas and approaches to the natural world formed over Alana's four-decades long practice.

Driven by a deeply sensed belonging to the disappearing natural world, she works in fragile wetlands on the edge of the country’s sixth largest city.Alana’s Coombabah Wetlands Project, begun in 2008 as a document of the ‘un-gardened’ beauty that exists on the Gold Coast, has informed this exhibition that call up near-mythic traces of wildness hidden in clear sight as she explains:“My practice is a fusion of sensate experience, imaginings and documentation gleaned from the fringes between urbanity and the wild. I work in local precious habitats and places often seen as abject that hold on in the face of urbanisation.“

Photographing by day and night, often utilising underwater lights and cameras, Alana gathers surreal and dreamlike impressions of these always transforming locations. Her work is process-based, iterative and immersive.  “At home in my studio, I weave together physical and metaphysical traces from these gleanings using digital manipulations of drawings, mark making, photography and painted works.”

The whole body of work exists in several series, encompassing works on paper, aluminum, recycled fabric, and time-based media. The iterative process involves on-going transformations of places across time, tides, weather conditions and seasonal changes in layer upon layer of media to varying degrees of abstraction.

Website: www.alanahampton.com

Instagram: @alanahampton.work