River: Nathalie Gautier-Hartog Exhibition

Nathalie Gautier-Hartog is a multi-disciplinary French-born artist living and working on Darkinjung Country. Over the past few decades, Gautier-Hartog has developed projects addressing human connections with the environment, underpinned by her own associations and relationship with the landscapes of France and Australia. Within her work she also considers the epochs of discoverers in the past and those of today. The River exhibition embodies an emblematic metaphor for the very notion of her journey. The river is a metaphor for time not only for its flow but also for the history embedded in it. People with memories understand the water rises, breaks through, drowns, and brings chaos and disorder. Rivers are a formidable energy responsible for engraving much of the landscape. 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 has inspired Gautier-Hartog to experiment with different materials, surfaces and mediums. She uses the earth and plant pigments; found along the rivers’ bed, as an ink to randomly print the river rocks, by rolling the rocks on the paper they act as the footsteps left behind by generations of migrants.