After the Burn, Mt Nelson (a new landscape emerges)

Research Backgound: This research sought to define new ways in which the migrant community can take control of imagery generated by the mass media that purports to illustrate the migrant experience. Often this imagery fails to convey how the migrant community may view their own situation and fraught sense of connection to a new place. This failure offers only limited views of the migrant community rather than how the migrant may view their host community. Research Contribution: Much visual art research proposes an approach to representation that seeks to appropriate imagery from the mass media and then re-apply that imagery within the artwork. In this painting Haddon questioned this relationship to media generated imagery by posing as a news reporter taking photographs of fire fighters engaged in back burning operations on Mount Nelson, Hobart. Using his own experience as a migrant Haddon then ‘appropriated’ these self-generated images, taken from the perspective of the migrant looking outward at the host community and used them in this painting. The painting employs a number of creative formal devices to defamiliarise the imagery and moves between figurative and abstract languages to create the uncertain visual terrain of the migrant experience. Research Significance: Using the above strategies this painting proposes a more authentic visual account of the emotional landscape of the migrant than is habitually seen in mass media reportage. The significance of the work is attested to by its selection for the Wynne Prize 2013 and also the Fleurieu Biennale 2013.