Artist Bio

Anna Nazzari is a Perth-based artist and writer. Her art practice examines the human othering of animals through sci-fi, horror and supernatural themes. Her artwork is multi-faceted and can include sculpture, film, drawing, painting and photography. Significant past exhibitions include the 2022, Perth Festival: Strangers on the Shore and the 2020 Adelaide Biennial: Monster Theatres. She has exhibited locally, and interstate and her collaborative and non-collaborative screen-based works have been shown at numerous international film festivals. Nazzari is collected by the Art Gallery of South Australia. In 2011, she completed a Doctorate of Philosophy (Art) on the absurd fate of gender ambiguous narratives. She currently works as a Lecturer at Curtin University’s School of Media, Creative Arts and Social Inquiry, via the OUA Art Studies program.

Artwork statement

Nestled in the Goldfields Woodlands, fifty eight kilometres south of Coolgardie is Burra Rocks, a water catchment wall and dam, initially built to stockpile water for the steam trains transporting timber and firewood along the railways to the mines, boilers and powerhouses in Kalgoorlie-Boulder. No longer servicing these industries, today Burra Rocks, with its extensive granite outcrops and panoramic woodland views, is a popular camping ground.

Growing up in Kalgoorlie Boulder, which sits on the edge of the Great Victoria Desert, the waterways of the region (Burra Rocks, Lake Douglas, Niagara Dam etc.) occupied my mind as mysterious feats of pioneering innovation – water where water was not supposed to be. In the searing heat of summer, as long as these dams possessed water, there was a sense wildlife would thrive and avoid foraging for food along the highways, which were notorious death traps.

Level Two Emu is both a homage to my childhood and an extension of my interest in Australian Gothic film, which repeatedly portrays the idea that the Australian landscape is unhomely and has the potential to disorient or disempower an “out of place” populace. The print, which is part of a bigger series of work, charts the arrival of an unknown presence in the dam at Burra Rocks and the possession of native fauna it has selected for regeneration and emancipation.