Exhibition: Sydney: A Saltwater Perspective

Venue: Arthouse Gallery, 66 McLachlan Ave, Rushcutters Bay, Sydney

Hobie Porter’s latest collection of paintings depicts the region of Port Jackson and Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs Banksia Scrub – known to the Eora people as Saltwater Country. In creating the paintings, Porter has been inspired by the contemporary current of historical revisionism of Indigenous engagement with, and cultivation of, the Australian landscape – led by authors such as Bill Gammage (The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines made Australia) and Bruce Pascoe (Dark Emu). ‘These works have inspired me to engage in my own historical revision of Sydney’, he reflects, ‘and to develop a project that might decolonise assumed constructions of place, and to think of the very familiar city of Sydney in a less familiar way’.

South Head Harvest (Saccostrea Glomerata) | Oil on polyester canvas | 110x200cm | 2019

Overlaying Porter’s vast landscapes are salient fragments from Indigenous natural history, which float, mid-air, like a displaced memory or material dream. The artist is fascinated by the flora and fauna utilised by Aboriginals in the Saltwater region, and how they managed these for a sustainable future. Some of the paintings, for example, feature remnants of shellfish species that have been identified in local midden sites as an important food source. In South-Head Harvest (Saccostrea Glomerata), a constellation of Sydney rock oyster shells hovers against a headland, the iconic red and white Hornby Lighthouse diminutive in the distance as Porter directs our gaze away from conspicuous European landmarks towards the subtle environmental symbiosis of Indigenous practices.

Many of the paintings depict Banksia Ericifolia seed cones as flaming torches, which were an important source of light prior to European settlement. In the foreground, fire flickers against a night-time backdrop of city lights, the effervescent flames evoking folds of classical drapery. These native cones glow scarlet like a burning heart – a revenant specter refusing to let its light go out.

In each work, the artist sensitively captures vignettes of shared human experience, whether it’s the enjoyment of Sydney rock oysters across different cultures or the fundamental need for light and warmth. By reflecting upon the profound Indigenous history in the Saltwater region, he prompts us to remember that the things we love about this place were also cherished by countless generations across cultures.

In the paintings, sweeping formations of sandstone stand like omniscient sentinels, their organic, gnarly formations eroded with the lashes of time. ‘My own understanding of this place has much to do with its sandstone’, reflects Porter, ‘There is a certain watery cadence in the weathered stone … the subtle sandstone colours offer a gravitas and sobriety to the region.’ These lofty sandstone vistas evoke an Australian Gothic, with the hostility of their craggy surfaces and malevolence of their threatening cliffs visualising the sublimated fears and foreignness enshrouding the Australian environment within the white Australian psyche.

Created from photographic material gathered by Porter from his father’s boat, drone imagery and walks along the escarpment of North Head, most of the paintings’ perspectives are from the water, as Porter imagines the moment when Governor Phillip’s first expedition party entered the alien landscape of Sydney Heads for the first time. Here he captures the uniquely white Australian anxiety of being a stranger in one’s own land – the mystery and secrecy of this land we call home.

-Elli Walsh