Kate McMillan Artist Talk

Video produced by Caddie and Tega Brain from COFA Online 

About Kate McMillan
Born 1974 in Hampshire, England
Lives and works in Perth, Australia

Kate McMillan’s photographs, videos and multimedia installations explore personal memory and the ability of landscape both to evoke and to represent history and trauma. Her works often start from personal experience, building up layers of meaning, to result in an immersive experiential installation that favours emotional responses over factual storytelling.

Islands have long held a fascination for McMillan, and she has spent several years conducting research into the history of Rottnest Island, a former Aboriginal prison and current holiday destination located off the coast of Western Australia. Disaster Narratives (2004) mingles local stories of Rottnest Island with different histories from around the world, each linked by a past that has been suppressed or forgotten. Combining photography, video and sound, the multimedia installation reveals the ghosts of historic events that lie unacknowledged beneath our cities – from European holiday destinations built over sites of war-time destruction, to the Underground City of Mao Zedong. 

lost (2008) continues McMillan’s exploration of the power of the landscape as a metaphor for loss and memory. The video and sound installation is a layered portrait of the landscape near the childhood home of her father that takes as its motif a view of a small island in New Zealand.