Syzygy 1/The Cygnus A Triptych

Lake Tyrrell in the Victorian Mallee once served as an indigenous celestial observatory. The heavens mirrored in its shallow waters informed a sacred reciprocity of sky with country, a reciprocity long since ruptured. Syzygy reflects upon this sacrament and its loss by using the (now usually dry) lakebed as an imaging surface upon which photographic films are exposed directly to the ambient light of the moonless night sky without a camera. This resulting shadow print cast by starlight inverts the trace of live native invertebrates gathered from around the lake shore and rare fragile astronomical glass plate photographs brought to the location. The kinetic ‘touch’ of creatures and emulsions and the photochemical ‘punctum’ of ancient cosmic light imprinting the exquisite final capture attempt to articulate a gentle indexical (physical) reciprocity with the site and stars. A reciprocity all but absent from our contemporary relationship with terrestrial nature.