Fence Lines was a series of paintings by Courtney Young shown at Hyphen Wodonga in October 2022.
Installation of Fence Lines at Hyphen Wodonga in October 2022
This series of paintings by artist and farmer Courtney Young is inspired by the landscape of North East Victoria, where she lives and works near Rutherglen. Courtney’s place-based practice explores relationships between binary notions of wild and domestic, and native and invasive. Courtney is interested in how land management has both ecological and visual ramifications. Moving between abstract and representational, Courtney’s geometric compositions suggest fence lines, paddocks and the landscapes which they contain.
The fantastic spottiness of capeweed and the purple haze of Paterson’s curse flourish in over-grazed paddocks. The lurid yellow checkerboards of canola contrast strangely against the warmth of roadside wattle.
Courtney’s work celebrates the beauty and capacity of plants, whether they are introduced weeds or natives. Courtney seeks to challenge her own colonial perspective of understanding, managing and seeing landscape, and question what it means to live and farm on unceded Aboriginal land.