Paula Mahoney – Grief Makes Us Strangers

This work is from the series This Landscape Holds Grief shot in Queenstown, Tasmania in January 2022. It is an exploration of the relationship between history and personal loss, and how grief manifests in the landscape as an absence. This work uses performative photographs, with myself and my daughter, and the clothes of my dead father, to highlight the intimate. A lament is performed that echoes the environmental devastation of the land and the loss of loved ones, referring particularly to the historical mining accidents that occurred here. This work represents an ongoing examination of death and personal loss, investigating lamentation, as a necessary and optimistic viewpoint, suggesting psychological shifts that create an awareness of our limits, and connect us, to each other and to a greater whole. 

Finalist – Sunshine Coast Art Prize 2022

Paula Mahoney | Grief makes us strangers | 2022 | pigment print on paper | 100 x 140cm