Narrandera-based artist Vic McEwan, who is also the National Museum’s 2015 artist-in-residence, created the large-scale still photography and video works in ‘Haunting’, in collaboration with curator George Main.
‘Haunting’ is now officially open at the museum. Haunting honours the Murrumbidgee River and its communities of people and other living beings.
It reveals how history – like the river – flows through the land and our lives.
On cold winter nights, McEwan projected images of museum objects, old photographs and a time-worn map across the Murrumbidgee River, onto fog, mist and campfire smoke drifting over the dark water.
The aim of the project was to remove objects from their Museum cabinets and project them into the active materiality of the places connected to their stories.
The ethereal images that evolved out of atmosphere honoured the material nature of the objects, along with their histories, place and time, and in the process the river and its turbulent history came alive in unexpected and sometimes mysterious ways.
This article appeared in the Narrandera Argus, 2 March 2023.
