Kelp Study, King Island (Diptych), 2023

Installation view

Remnants of a kelp harvest laid directly onto cyanotype coated paper on a remote beach, King Island, Tasmania. The Southern Ocean did the rest. What remains is not a photograph of kelp but a physical record of its contact with the light-sensitive surface, the biological material of the place pressed into the chemistry of the paper, the tidal shore becoming both subject and darkroom. The Prussian blue of the cyanotype is produced by UV reacting with the iron salts in the emulsion, while the oxidised amber and gold of the exposed ground record the pH of the seawater and the organic sediment of the kelp harvest itself — the landscape inscribed directly into the photochemistry. The kelp that washes through this diptych has been harvested from these waters for generations