For Elliat Rich the design process is a creative translation between materials and culture, alive to a broader context of power and social value.
Through her editioned objects Rich responds to the sentience of the planet through mythology as a way to nest and communicate knowledges, experience and otherness. Working with the intention of an artist while using the language of design, her sophisticated and mercurial use of materials serves her underlying brief to deliver an experience of belonging through objects.
Based within the complex socio-bio-historical ecology of Mparntwe Alice Springs, Rich works with many respected clients and collaborators within central Australia and nationally. Lead by curiosity, enriched through wonder and always calling on the possibilities of the imagination.
All projects align with an ethical imperative to increase equality between people and across species, now and into the future.
Photographer Martina Capurso
Courtesy Powerhouse Museum, Sydney
This image was taken on the traditional lands of the Arrernte people, the rock-face you can see was exposed as part of an extractive mining practice, in all likelihood without the consent of its’ custodians. Through settler culture this place is called the Ilparpa Quarry, although the access road has already been washed away and the damage, unseen by most, left without amends.
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It is also the site that I was first introduced to a lived experience of mythology. Craig San Roque and company’s Persephone, a simple performance that threw shadows from fire light against the rock, faced the ancient expanse of the Ilparpa valley beyond and teased the threads from those of Greek heritage with those of this site. I felt both tale and place simultaneously and wished I believed the stories being told.
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This image has been consciously uncropped, it is an attempt at placing a human in relation to a more-than-human entity, being in conversation with and in recognition of place.
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My thanks to photographer Martina Capurso, Margaret Hancock-Davis and Sabina Wakerman for their guidance and to the 3-second wind that visited at this precise moment.
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I acknowledge the unbroken sovereignty of First Nations people and the countless struggles against settler-colonial occupation. I acknowledge the sustained and mythic relationship First Peoples of the planet have with their Country / Land / Mother and hope to move towards this otherwiseness through recognition, understanding and justice.