Artist: Sammy Hawker

Listen to the wind, to the trees, to the rocks – they speak, but not in your language. – Lakota (Sioux) teaching

‘Ghosts [& Monsters]’ is an exhibition of works created by Sammy Hawker on-site at the Corridor Project – an artist residency programme on Wiradjuri Country, New South Wales, Australia, which invites a diverse selection of creative minds to spend time in the landscape and thus explore different ways of understanding our entwined relationship with nature.

The works on show reinterpret the corporeal world, treating physical states almost as alternate languages, and finding great beauty in the differences. They explore how experimental art processes can materialise hidden, intangible things into being, bringing to light that which usually exists beyond the scope of vision, reflecting on how sentience and memory is inscribed within materials, sites and bodies.

Hawker’s practice is in many ways a form of scientific investigation, visually exploring natural phenomena. She describes her works as ‘co-creations’, made in a kind of collaboration with spiders, snakes, insects and birds, for example, primarily in her native Australia. Hawker initially trained as a photographer, and much of the work in the exhibition incorporates photography and photographic processes.