Neil Haddon Grafting landscape (West Hobart)

Grafting landscape (West Hobart) is one of a series of works that looks at migration to and from Tasmania, all of which attempt to convey a sense of the emotional implications of leaving a place of deeply felt connection.

As a migrant to this island I have been grafted onto the rootstock of a Tasmanian family and place. Over the years, scion has fused with rootstock but I am not clear what hybrid merging has occurred or what has been drawn up through me: something darker and older.

Grafting landscape (West Hobart) can be located amongst some grafted apple trees in a small backyard in West Hobart. But it also contains traces of multiple landscapes, of other hemispheres, of merged heritage and complex, fused histories in the ambiguous and multi-layered ground.

Neil Haddon, 2012