Return by Barkandji artist Zena Cumpston features many indigenous plants of place on Wurundjeri Country, embedded in the deep-time cultural landscapes of the city of Naarm (Melbourne). This series speaks to Indigenous ways of knowing plant kin, and the inter-relationships between people, plants and animals over time. Compositions also foreshadow a deeper reckoning, highlighting the crossing out and erasure of knowledges through the ongoing harms of colonisation. What may look like an illumination of knowledge can be an erasure when extractive power imbalances do not shift. 

For many years Zena has researched and written about Indigenous plant use, producing books,  book chapters, free resources and visual art to telegraph layered stories of the science and innovation of her people. Each of the limited edition linocut prints are hand-carved, hand-printed, collaged and painted with kopi, a type of ochre from the artist’s Barkandji Country that has been utilised over millennia. Zena was taught to process kopi from her Elder, Uncle Badger Bates. She utilises it in all of her work as a manifestation of her Country, ever-present within her.

linocut collage and kopi on Fabriano paper

dimensions 62 × 45 cm (framed)

Unframed work id available, please contact us to discuss options.

Each edition is handmade and may present minor variations from this process.

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