Design and Art Australia Online

1 million years saw the return of another former Darwin-based artist to NCCA, with NSW-based Hayley West employing sculpture and video-based performance to address persistent themes in her work relating to the 'vestigial’: the embodiment of memory, archive and grief.

NCCA’s Screen Room became a 'makeshift temple’ with a video work in which West performs a series of acts in a prehistoric-like 'grotto’ setting in the Blue Mountains where she resides. These acts broadly suggest family histories, bereavement and the vestigial. 'By contextualising the vestigial into a contemporary art framework’, states West, 'there is an attempt to alleviate grief, relax impending emotional upheavals, or assist in the recovery of surpressed or avoided emotions’.