Bronia Iwanczak: The flower forays

Channelling the legacy of Francis Ford Coppola’s film Apocalypse Now, theosophical thought forms and a residency at the Bundanon Trust, this series of photographic works by Bronia Iwanczak takes the still life as memento mori to a new pitch of aesthetic entanglement.The Bundanon Homestead, built in the 1860s, part of Arthur Boyd’s former estate and now a creative retreat, draws on very particular associations with nature and the environment as the subject for art. Set amidst the pastoral lands and pockets of native bush that line the hills and gorges leading down to the Shoalhaven River, this is a landscape already encoded by the colonising vision of the white male artist as creator figure. Added to this, as anyone who has spent time on the property knows, the idyllic space of contemplation can at a moment’s notice be overwhelmed by the manoeuvres of the Australian Army helicopters flying overhead from the nearby Jervis Bay Military Base.