Hanging Rock, 1900 # 3
Polixeni Papapetrou
2006 | pigment ink jet print | edition 3 of 6 | accession number 732
purchased by the Art Board 2006 - Murdoch University Art Collection

Polixeni PAPAPETROU

born Melbourne, Victoria
lives and works Melbourne, Victoria

The image of the 'bush-lost' child is a potent theme that recurs throughout Australian art, film and literature. Examples of this can be seen in the paintings of Frederick McCubbin and in films such as Nicholas Roeg's Walkabout.

In her photographic series Haunted Country, Polixeni Papapetrou reflects upon the early European settlers’ experience of the land. Haunted Country suggests that they felt immense unease within this ancient landscape of unfamiliar flora,fauna and people. Papapetrou uses the image of the lost child as a metaphor to explore some of the moral and emotional dilemmas encountered on the land by the early Europeans and their children. The land is regarded as sacred to Indigenous Australian, but in white Australian consciousness, the land and especially the ‘bush’, has evolved to become a place of danger where people can easily become lost.

The artist considers the impact of these stories on our understanding of country, landscape and community. Papapetrou has created images that embody real and fictional accounts of children who have gone missing. She draws the viewer into the emotional space of the photograph, to experience the undercurrent of the psychological drama unfolding and makes connections between past and present consciousness about land and country.

Papapetrou's scenes are set in different eras and were staged at sites within Victoria such as the Wimmera, Daylesford and Hanging Rock, where children became lost (albeit fictional with the latter). Most of the stories suggest nature was the culprit responsible for stealing the children.

Papapetrou extends the accounts to include more recent stories about the disappearance of children who vanished without a trace from public places, such as the beach and other holiday destinations. These stories, full of unease, are deeply embedded in our cultural psyche. She touches upon the eternal vulnerability of children in both the natural and social orders, using landscape metaphorically, as a resonant backdrop for a social ‘distancing’ that can occur with children ‘lost’.

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