For Elliat Rich the design process is a creative translation between materials and culture, alive to a broader context of power and social value. Lead by curiosity, enriched through wonder and always calling on the possibilities of the imagination.
Elliat is based in Alice Springs, Central Australia. She works across a broad-spectrum of design for a diverse client base, remotely, locally and nationally. Her practice covers cross-cultural resources, exhibition design, public art and furniture, product development, one-off exhibition and editioned objects.
All projects align with an ethical imperative to increase equality between people and across species, now and into the future.
Photographer Martina Capurso
Courtesy Powerhouse Museum, Sydney
This image was taken on the traditional lands of the Arrernte people, the rock-face you can see was exposed as part of an extractive mining practice, in all likelihood without the consent of its’ custodians. Through settler culture this place is called the Ilparpa Quarry, although the access road has already been washed away and the damage, unseen by most, left without amends.
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It is also the site that I was first introduced to a lived experience of mythology. Craig San Roque and company’s Persephone, a simple performance that threw shadows from fire light against the rock, faced the ancient expanse of the Ilparpa valley beyond and teased the threads from those of Greek heritage with those of this site. I felt both tale and place simultaneously and wished I believed the stories being told.
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This image has been consciously uncropped, it is an attempt at placing a human in relation to a more-than-human entity, being in conversation with and in recognition of place.
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My thanks to photographer Martina Capurso, Margaret Hancock-Davis and Sabina Wakerman for their guidance and to the 3-second wind that visited at this precise moment.
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I acknowledge the unbroken sovereignty of First Nations people and the countless struggles against settler-colonial occupation. I acknowledge the sustained and mythic relationship First Peoples of the planet have with their Country / Land / Mother and hope to move towards this otherwiseness through recognition, understanding and justice.