Engaging in fieldwork in Gathaagudu , Shark Bay , the lands of the traditional owners, the Malgana, Nhanda, Nyikina, and Jabirr Jabirr, I focus on the seasonal shifts in the ecosystems of Stromatolites living in one of the two bays.

Stromatolites grow in warm, shallow, and slow-moving tidal waters. They are made up of sediment and cyanobacteria. They grow towards the sun through a process of photosynthesis and increase in shape and size. This unique biological and geological arrangement challenges given perceptions of rock as inert, stable, and solid.

Australian cultural theorist Claire Colebrook (Colebrook, Claire. “‘A Grandiose Time of Coexistence’: Stratigraphy of the Anthropocene.” Deleuze Studies) reminds me that ‘the human’ is “but one fragment of a world that is composed of different modes of existence, including human and nonhuman persons. “

All life shares a common origin in ancient cyanobacterial life and as found in stromatolites, different modes of existence are entangled.

Ada Fossa, Elder of the Malgana people of Gathaagudu Shark Bay explains, “Stromatolites are our old people. They carry the spirits of our Malgana ancestors”.

The Malgana have known the significance of human relatedness with stromatolites for thousands of years.

Engaging in fieldwork is grounded in the ‘intra-relational’, a mutual contribution of agencies, or the ability to act, and how we emerge through, and are part of, our engagement with matter in the natural world.

Being situated in my fieldwork has allowed me to bring about an embodied knowledge in the material aspect of my studio through the stromatolites, their environment, their intra-actions, particularly in the living colonies in Gathaagudu.

Shape of Wind ongoing work site tests

watery surface site work

Submersion Stains 2022 Calico Cloth 340 x 90 cm

stromatolites image p.coss

Collage stromatolite patterning.