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Fiona MacDonald
Mt Morgan Trustees/Children / 1993
Mob is a series developed from my interest in the machinations of history-making, drawing largely on found documentation and anecdote. Researched in Rockhampton public archives, the characters in the portrait photographs were all an inherent part of the goldmining boom that put Rockhampton on the map and fed the pockets of interstate industrialists. In Mob #26, the very different histories of two social groups (company trustees / mine workers children) are fused, slicing portraits into thin strips and weaving them into a single image, putting the invisible underclass into the picture by re-stitching the very fabric of history.
Tongue and Groove N.8 / 2009
Tongue and Groove # 8 is from a series that speculates on the effect the massive influx of American service men during the Second World War might have had on the dream life of townsfolk of Rockhampton. Did American culture dazzle these portrait subjects who present themselves as Hollywood stars? The images split into strips the width of ‘tongue and groove’ typical of Rockhampton’s timber architecture to metaphorically form a haunted house. The women’s names are lost but addresses legible on surviving negative packets were photographed many years later to form a predella at the base of the work evoking the passing of time.
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