CARA JOHNSON

The bit of the creek where the willow grows is dank and dark, and quiet. Underneath is slippery as the brown and yellow leaves rot. Tangled roots thirstily cling to the muddy banks and limbs reach across shallow water.

It wasn’t very long ago that I was despondent looking out across this section of creek. Inside the fence line the willow snaked its way along the waterline changing everything as it crept allowing nothing else to grow here. But the fence line placed this bit of creek out of my hands, the thin iron wire denoted and divided, tensioned between posts made from old trees.

I cut a willow branch from this place and dragged it home. With iron wire I welded thousands of times around the undulations of the branch, each spot weld producing a small puff of smoke as the thin bark underneath the metal threatened to ignite. Once completely encased I let the branch burn so that a hollow tracing remained.

Through this iron tracing I choose to honour the willow and surrender a little. When I look away, to a different stretch of the same creek I can see tall remnant trees and seedlings glowing as the sun illuminates them through tree guards.

I walked the ash back down the hill to the creek, and let the wind take it, and as I hold onto this iron wire outline, I hope amidst the hopelessness.

Cara Johnson is a craft artist based in regional Victoria. Her work interrogates tensions and narratives connected to the ways land is treated and used through material, intention and invested labour. Her practice is entwined with her rural location and primarily concerned with traversing the complexities between people and plants. In 2016 Cara completed a Bachelor of Fine Art-Gold & Silversmithing (First Class Hons.) at RMIT University, where she is also a current PhD Candidate. Recent solo exhibitions include Understory at the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria, Overlay at The Santos Museum of Economic Botany and Semblance of Repair at Gallery Funaki. Cara was selected for Schmuck in both 2022 and 2023 and exhibits widely in group shows nationally and internationally including Paper Art 2017 at CODA Museum in the Netherlands and the Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize 2021. Cara's works are held in various public and private collections, including the National Gallery of Victoria.

Creek (willow), 2023
Iron wire
468mm L x 16mm W x 39mm H
NFS