Emma Smith, Gully, Oil on canvas, 250 x 400 mm ,2013

Emma Smith, I know your head II, Oil on canvas, 400 x 350mm, 2012

Emma Smith, The beekeepers, Oil on canvas, 250 x 400 mm ,2013

Emma Smith, Vine air ,Gouache on card, 250 x350 mm

Emma Smith, Low believing stars, Oil on canvas, 250 x 400 mm ,2013

Emma Smith, Cast out ,Gouache on card, 250 x350 mm

Emma Smith, The judge ,Gouache on card, 250 x350 mm

Emma Smith, Jane 40 ,Gouache on card, 250 x350 mm

I began this series by documenting (with photography) areas of Oakley Creek (Auckland, New Zealand) near where I work and live. The site is of historical and environmental import. I was especially interested in the Mount Albert end where the restoration is not yet complete. Studies from the photographs produced a series of works that described the reflective, still- even stagnant, twisted, knotted & overgrown qualities of the site. I was thinking on the descriptions of the still and silent river in Heart of Darkness, of Virilio talking about the tyranny of silence (that a sound of gun fire is less terrifying than silence in jungle warfare), of Ernst’s love, fear and adoration of the forest as a site of great beauty and terror. This pretty humble and once neglected inner-city waterway seemed to me to witness some violent upheavals in a relatively short space of time, while settlement, immigration, commerce, expansion, consumption, – lives – formed around it .