June, 1770. Captain James Cook’s ship runs aground at the river mouth of Waalumbaal Birri (Endeavour River). While repairs were underway, a sailor returning from patrol in a nearby forest recalls encountering a creature “black as the devil, with wings; indeed I took it for the devil, or I might easily have caught it for it crawled very slowly through the grass.”
More commonly known today as the flying fox, this ‘devil with wings’ is a migratory and nomadic keystone species in the Australian ecosystem playing a significant role through the pollination of flowers and dispersing seeds in their nighttime foraging. Roaming widely, they travel hundreds of kilometres to follow the season’s change. As native forests are cleared, and barbed wire fences are erected, they are left with few options for shelter, food and water, flocking to the allure of botanical gardens and backyards filled with ripening fruit and flowering plants.
‘We and others are entangled in knots of species who are co-shaping each other in layers of reciprocating complexity.’ Slowly Through the Grass rests on this interpretation of species articulated by Donna Haraway and engages the complex interrelationships between humans and flying foxes. This work is made through an assemblage of photographs informed by childhood memories, found materials from ecological texts, and processes of making physical interventions on printed matter.
Slowly Through the Grass - Self Published
Cover: 325gsm Mohawk eggshell ultra white
Inside pages: 118gsm Mohawk eggshell ultra white
Pages: 72
Book size: H 241mm x W 190mm
Tipped in pages: 100gsm Envirocare
Binding: Swiss bound with blue binding tape
Edition of 10