Songlines of the Here+Now

Songlines; Ancient Aboriginal maps passed on through song, story or dance. When sung these songs describe landmarks lining the route of a journey. These songlines allow the traveller to navigate their way across vast distances of the Australian landscape. In doing so, these travellers keep the sacred land alive. Houghton’s practice focuses on the connection between humans and the landscape. The comparisons between the past and the present, gathering stories that are formed in the landscape, and in return the stories that those landscapes tell about us. Upon learning about the mythology surrounding Aboriginal Songlines the idea to go walkabout, alone, across the Australian landscape was affirmed. Houghton set off to explore the deep-rooted connection Australia’s inhabitants form to the landscape they call home. Covering a total of 10,500 km, she collected scattered stories and imprinted memories strewn over the Australian landscape. Gaining a deeper understanding of the Country’s past, and of the Indigenous’ deep-rooted connection to the land that has been their home for thousands of years. What emerged were two conflicting devotions to the landscape; that of the Indigenous sacred connection to the land and the present Australians commercialisation of space through land tourism. Despite the tenuous past of the nation, there is a shared love of the land, both past and present. Giving no weight to any one persons, physical representations of individuals encountered were removed. The stories that were shared are represented through the landscape in which they were created. The resulting body of work is a homage to the Indigenous peoples of Australia. A record of a journey, collections of landscapes and still-lifes, stories and natural interventions that explore human experience through listening to the language of the Australian landscape.