MOTHER SITE II: for Eleanor (with selfies) 2024

Mother site II: for Eleanor (with selfies) 2023-24 is a hybrid printmaking work that traces family stories and history within the layers of the work. It is the story of Linda Swinfields long deceased ancestor Eleanor Meredith. Mother Site II is a feminist story attempting to underline women’s collective history in colonial Australia. The selected images submerge and reveal themselves inviting what is hidden to be revealed as history does. Swinfield sees herself as akin to a history novelist attempting to interrogate and re-reveal history through constructed stories. In this work Swinfield acknowledges the hidden layers that get submerged, reveal and question our own collective histories using images of her own feisty ancestor Eleanor who was the youngest daughter of a second fleet convict and a first fleet sea steward. The Meredith family history is well documented as “Australian Royalty”. Eleanor was married very young and absconded remarrying eventually being buried in Ipswich Queensland after giving birth to sixteen children by two fathers. Swinfield is descended from the first marriage to John Burrows. In this work Swinfield has used her own “selfie” images as a symbol of connection to Eleanors DNA. She has also incorporated textured layers of three 19th century sites including early photographs of the family land grant, the home of Eleanor and her second husband Frederick Ferrier at Rutherford NSW and traces of the layers of Woodford Academy. The silkscreen images inserted are of Eleanor Meredith as a young woman and in her dotage surrounded by her children and grandchildren. Also included are images of her childhood home near Salt Pan Creek. Our families second land grant (now Punchbowl). During the artists’ residency at Woodford Academy in 2023, Swinfield contemplated her own ancestors’ history with the Buss family who ran the roadside inn on this site. Mrs Buss https://lindaswinfield.wordpress.com/2021/02/19/eleanor-meredith-a-victorian-womans-story/also married to an ex-convict. Traces of the historic layers at Woodford Academy remain in this work. This work was begun at the end of the artist residency and during workshops with local high school students for the “Non Selfie- Selfie 2023” workshops. More about Eleanors Story: https://lindaswinfield.wordpress.com/2021/02/19/eleanor-meredith-a-victorian-womans-story/