Moving on implies leaving behind…eighteen years on a farm in the sub-tropical rainforest hills of northern NSW, lovingly tended animals, gardens, home and friendships…The pain of loss came to an abrupt end on resettling in coastal north Queensland in 2000.
From new beginnings shifts of consciousness are born and since then my work has consisted largely of transient, site-specific, installations exploring the power, poetics, possibilities of engaging with the elements and the natural world.
A rather private affair, it has been documented through photographs, with a Public Art sculptural installation emerging from it.
The theme of loss and renewal is no stranger to my work with the angel (scratchy, dinted, not too perfect) emerging several years ago as a symbol of renewal.
In Flying with Angels, Songs of Renewal angels/personages proceed seaward, inviting the viewer into a personally charged iconic and symbolic landscape. The installation evokes a sense of place by the use of natural materials collected from my immediate environment.
It makes reference to both physical and psychological notions of interior, exterior and nature, culture.
Putting this show together has been an interactive journey between ideas and process, a continual unfolding up to the last days: the shift from exterior site back to the gallery space; the inclusion of and relationship between text and image; the use of floor space as a means of including the shadow self as archetypal symbol.
It is life-affirming and pays homage to the power and beauty of the natural world.
Bonney Bombach,
March 2001
Poem 1
Mysterious heartbeat on the water
your golden line of light mirrored
to a distant night song.
Hidden beyond hills and headlands
some godhead kindles
the fire of the earth.
Poem 2
In the stillness beyond the headland,
the moon rises pale in its newness.
Dented angel, the whispering fish
echo the silence of
your beating wings.
