Christine Porter has been making artwork about shearing sheds since 1984, when she was governessing in North Queensland.  As a “serial artist-in-residence” she is invited to sheep and cattle stations all over Queensland and New South Wales to create bodies of artwork that become like a portrait of the place at that time.

Artist Statement

This shearing shed is typical of many that I make artwork about. It was built at a time when the sheep industry carried Australia on its back: when our wool warmed the world. Land use and markets have changed. Often, as the artist, I am the last one in before the bulldozers. My work describes the final shearing, the flock replaced by herd, the loss of respect for an industry that placed the Australian economy on the world stage. I meet people from the cities or coastal fringes and hear their mis-information and mis-understandings about agriculture and grazing. It is a gradual and inevitable amnesia that describes the true balance of power in a country that still needs to feed itself.

This work is not deliberately nostalgic. Its about real people, real places. It’s about how, despite those lifestyles being trivialised by mass media and hijacked by tourism, for so many Australians this is still home.
Christine Porter 2009

Painting projects