24 Jan Interviewing Bridget Hillebrand | A story about exploring nature and technique
Hello Bridget, first I would like to start from your biography and the beginning of your career. How did you first get involved in the world of art? Was there a particular moment or experience that made you realize that an artistic career would be a fundamental part of your life?
I am an interdisciplinary artist based in Melbourne, Australia and completed my PhD at Monash University, (AUS) and a Master of Arts (Fine Art) from RMIT University, (AUS). My artworks have developed through a variety of forms including print, audio, video, art objects and installations. My PhD provided time and focus to develop a series of work inspired by my experiences with landscape. This process encouraged me to articulate my thoughts and reflections, which, in turn, enriched my understanding and experiences in numerous ways. Ongoing research on ecological themes stimulates my interests to further challenge and explore the corporeal and spatial aspects of my work. It also enhances the kinaesthetic nature of my creative research to further explore an interactive engagement between viewer and artwork.
The interview
Your recent project, River, which was exhibited during Arte Laguna Prize exhibition, reflects on human impact on shifting ecological systems. What messages do you hope to convey through your work regarding the connection between art and ecological awareness?
Drawing on a range of innovative techniques using handmade washi paper, relief printing and audio, River is an ambitious site-specific installation and soundscape, informed by the changing ecology of Birrarung (Yarra River) that winds its way through northeast Victoria, Australia. Indigenous Australians, the Wurundjeri people call the Yarra River Birrarung, translated as river of mists. The landscape of the Birrarung has changed dramatically over the years. Its course has been progressively disrupted and widened in places. Today Birrarung’s environmental health is at risk due to pollution and urban development.
‘River’ was first exhibited in 2023 in Melbourne, Australia as part of the Birrarung Riverfest. A month-long community celebration to promote river connection and care. It was launched on World Rivers Day which focused on the crucial role rivers play in sustaining life. Combined with a soundscape recorded from specific sites along the Birrarung, the viewer is invited into an intimate and constructed realm to contemplate our place and responsibility within local living systems. Moving through the immersive and sensory installation, folded, crumpled and layered printed washi paper imitate the crests and troughs of an ancient waterway and repetitive printed marks suggest refraction of light, mist and shadow. ‘River’, like many of my recent works, offers an opportunity for sustained interaction and poetically reveals the textural and printed qualities of my creative process while suggesting the transience and fragility of natural habitats as sites of contemplation.
Bridget Hillebrand at Arsenale Nord, Venice for Arte Laguna Prize (2024)
Being a finalist in the 19th Edition of Arte Laguna Prize and having the opportunity to exhibit in Venice is a significant achievement. How did it felt to know that your work River was being recognized on such an international stage, and what did this opportunity mean to you both as an artist and as someone whose work reflects on ecological themes?
As an artist that reflects on ecological themes I was very appreciative of the opportunity for my work ‘River’ to be seen by a new audience. Exhibiting internationally can create awareness, stimulate dialogue about environmental stability and provide opportunities for future collaborations and exhibitions. I look forward to developing new international projects in the future.
How would you describe the process through which you translate your physical and emotional experiences into tangible works of art?
I often create location-inspired work and engage in immersive residencies and site-related projects utilising print, audio, video, art objects and installations. My art practice involves traversing areas of bushland and remote landscapes to engage and explore personal, cultural and environmental histories echoing the symbiotic relationship we have with an enduring natural world and our ephemeral place within it. My visual research explores the relationship between the physicality of making images as a response to the corporeal dimension of the experience of place. My bodily engagement is fundamental to my experience of place.
I am interested in the way my work is experienced physically and visually, and attempt to delay the speed at which they are viewed so that the experience of looking takes the form of a genuine physical response. Just as the dynamics of the natural environment reveal spaces beyond it surface contours my installations expose openings and hidden surfaces that engage the moving viewer. Our world is not based on cognition or intellect alone, but is also grounded in our awareness as bodies: bodies that move and feel sensations.
Focusing on a responsive, meditative and experimental practice, I seek opportunities to push the boundaries of traditional printmaking methods and explore the unique sculptural potential of washi paper by developing innovative printing techniques and methods to create large-scale constructed paper works that reflect upon human impact on shifting ecological systems. The surface of my printed works are tactile, folded, layered, torn, stitched and reprinted. My works are highly personal, poetic, meditative responses, which bear witness to the experience of my existence in the natural world.
River artwork at Arsenale Nord, Venice for Arte Laguna Prize (2024)
River artwork at Arsenale Nord, Venice for Arte Laguna Prize (2024)
The contest was created to give a launchpad for the career of many emerging artists all over the world, and this is exactly what Arte Laguna wish to you. Do you think that this experience could have helped you being recognized more? Do you have future projects to share with us?
Presenting my work at the Arsenale Nord in Venice was a wonderful opportunity to gain international recognition and visibility and to connect with new audiences. It was also inspiring to meet so many talented international artists and to hear their stories. I am currently exhibiting work at ‘The Ecologies Project’ Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery (AUS) where I will be presenting an artist talk on 31 January 2025. The curated group exhibition looks at generational conversations about changing climate and its impact on us individually and on our culture more broadly. I am also excited to announce that ‘River’ will be exhibited in a new iteration at Shepparton Art Museum (AUS) later this year. My solo exhibition ‘Into the Deep’ at Latrobe Regional Gallery (AUS) is also planned for 2025. Through research, embodied engagement and creative interpretation I aim to draw attention to the shifting ecology of our deepest waters.
Curatorial Text
By Paloma Chavez, independent curator
‘A Shift of Focus…’ River, Bridget Hillebrand’s Immersive Installation
In Australia’s Indigenous law, rivers like the Birrarung (Yarra River) are considered ancestral beings. Carrying stories and histories along their path, rivers are metaphors for the constant movement of life. For over a decade, Bridget Hillebrand has focused her research on the shifting ecology of oceans and river systems. She has swum in bodies of water, including billabongs, dams, creeks, and oceans, and as an avid rock climber, she has ventured into wilderness areas and contemplated landscapes, informing diverse aspects of her practice.
River, her work recently shown at Arte Laguna Prize in Venice, offers a micro and macro multi-sensory experience that fuses printmaking, sculpture, and sound. The monumental installation features large sheets of printed paper that fall and fold to the ground, inviting us to physically engage with the piece, listen, and observe the fine, muted tones that envelop us. ‘Echoing the physical and spatial element I experience when engaging with the natural world,’ the artist describes.
With a profound knowledge of the language of printmaking, Hillebrand translates the performative flow of the river—its natural interruptions, sticks, and reeds—into mark-making. Her approach is rooted in the physicality of what feeling her way into the landscape evokes and ‘shifting your vision from observing details to perceiving the whole.’ Rendering meditative, repetitive cuts onto the plates, she experiments with varying printing pressure on the large sheets of washi paper as they absorb the blue-black ink and embraces the irregularities and slight variations that suggest the tonal differences in the movement and the reflection of light over water.
In this raw display, Hillebrand deliberately presents the back side of the paper to reveal the organic imperfections and subtleties in fibre, tone, and texture. She collates the multiple printed sheets into a three-dimensional installation that hangs in constant flux. ‘It’s as if the work is breathing,’ she notes. Just as winds shape waves, the piece is not static; it shifts, affected by the people and airflow in the exhibition space.
Change is the only constant in life—a concept attributed to the philosopher Heraclitus, who illustrated this notion through the metaphor: ‘What steps into the same rivers, newer and newer waters flow…’ This is the second iteration of River, originally conceived as a site-specific piece for the Birrarung Riverfest on World Rivers Day festival in Melbourne, Australia, in 2023. For Hillebrand, installing the piece is a fluid, ongoing process that allows it to evolve in different spaces, each time becoming a new form.
The idea of impermanence and transformation also refers to our impact on the fragility and the changing ecology of the river. The soundscape immerses us deeper in this experience, transporting us with recordings of the fluvial currents across different seasons. Roaring in winter’s torrential rain, the slow, dry summer when the crickets emerge, a chorus of cockatoos, wattlebirds, and insects around the riverbed creates an orchestra of the life of the river.
Through River, Hillebrand compels us ‘to reflect upon our personal and collective place in the landscape and our responsibility to it.’ Her poetic work urges us to remain curious and, with great respect, explore our interconnectedness with nature and art.
Bridget was recently selected as the Australian Commissioner for the 12th Ulsan International Woodcut & Linocut Print Festival in South Korea, 2024. She has also received a number of awards, including winner of the 2021 Experimental Print Prize at Castlemaine Art Museum, Victoria. Her work is represented in over 40 major public collections in Australia and internationally including the National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of NSW, and Maiiam Contemporary Art Museum Chiang Mai, Thailand.