In February 2020 Sally spent a month as an artist in residence at Big Ci (Bilpin Centre for Creative Industries) situated between the Blue Mountains and Wollemi National Parks in Australia. She arrived just after the ‘Black Summer’ bushfires were finally extinguished by torrential rain. Everywhere were sad vistas of black and burnt trees. By the end of the residency however many of these trees were putting out bright green and pink new foliage in an extraordinary display of resilience.

All the artists made work about the fires. Sally’s final exhibition was called ‘A Walk Through the Forest’ and took the viewer though healthy green trees, to burning and burnt trees, to regenerating trees. A final section in white imagined a scenario where more intense and frequent fires meant that the trees were unable to regenerate, and all that was left of the National Parks were ghostly memories.

The residency was important for Sally as she moved away from representational wall pieces to more conceptual installations, and led to the development of her next body of work Fragile Earth  

Studio photos by Geoff Sumner