Gareth Sansom Made in Wadeye

Made in Wadeye is a suite of 20 drawings selected by the artist from a larger group of some 40 made over a period of about 11 days in Wadeye, a remote Indigenous settlement south-west of Darwin, in September 2012. Gareth Sansom spent two weeks in the town with his wife, a doctor, who had flown in for a month of clinical work. He walked the streets of the town, sometimes taking photographs, and observed and met the local people. The drawings were made in a pad of cartridge paper and disassembled when he returned to his Melbourne studio. He applied additional collage to some.

Works on paper are a discrete and ongoing aspect of Sansom’s oeuvre. He says, ‘They balance out my work, explain what I am doing.’ Occasionally he uses drawings to resolve problems in a painting; some are kept in a ‘collage box’ for possible re-use in future works.

Sansom’s Wadeye drawings were made independently of any other work. They were a product of his time in the settlement, which was a dislocating experience of time and place. However, while Wadeye was the impetus for the series, it was not its subject. Sansom explains, ‘I make stream of consciousness drawings with sources going back years.’ References to Wadeye are limited to a photocopy of a small hand-drawn map given to the artist by a local nurse, which he has added as collage in one of the drawings; and some earth, captured in egg tempera on paper.