DONNA BAILEY
DON’T PLAY ON THE MULLOCK
The fact that I live only walking distance away from where gold was first discovered in Bendigo is not lost on me as I continually scan this area to make pictures. The sites that I photograph are laden with the weight of the history of white settlement and I am compelled by the physical and psychological experience of living near these former mining sites, to make something of them.
Donna’s most recent series pictures the wastelands that lie on the perimeter of the city of Bendigo in Victoria. The former gold mining sites near Kangaroo Flat and Eaglehawk have a spooky countenance born by the unsettling history of 19th century settlement there. Guided by the original names of the places – Diamond Hill, Beelzebub Gully, Whipstick, Golden Gully, New Moon, Christmas Reef – Donna links the history of the sites with her contemporary perspective. The representation of childhood and adolescence is integral to Donna’s artistic practice. She has pictured her children and their friends over a period of more than a dozen years. In this series she deliberately distances the young figures and their playthings, against the mullock, skeletal forests and barren floors of the eerie, early Victorian goldfields.
BIOGRAPHY
Donna lives in Kangaroo Flat on the outskirts of Bendigo, Victoria. Her work has been shown widely in solo, group and touring exhibitions in galleries throughout Australia. These include the National Gallery of Victoria, the Australian Centre for Photography, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Monash University Museum of Art, Monash Gallery of Art, Stills Gallery, Bendigo Art Gallery, Albury Art Gallery, the Centre for Contemporary Photography and in regional galleries in New South Wales, Tasmania, Queensland, Victoria and Western Australia. Her photographs are currently showing in Manilla in, Me Here Now: Place and Identity in Contemporary Australian Art, Ateneo Art Gallery.
Donna has been the recipient of numerous grants and prizes for her photography. These include an Arts Victoria, Arts Development Grant in 2009, the Adelaide University Visual Arts Prize in 2006 and the National Photographic Purchase Award in 2003 and 2005. Her work has been selected for inclusion in various photography awards throughout Australia, most recently the 2011 Josephine Ulrick & Win Schubert Photography Award, Gold Coast City Gallery, Queensland. Donna’s works are held in the collections of the National Gallery of Victoria, Monash Gallery of Art, Monash University Museum of Art, La Trobe University (FM Curtis collection), Adelaide University, Bendigo Art Gallery, Albury Art Gallery and in private collections. She has also been a member of the Australian collective Oculi since 2006.