SAMMY HAWKER

Kamberri/Canberra-based artist Sammy Hawker explores the potential of reciprocal engagements between human and more-than-human worlds. Hawker’s multi-disciplinary practice consistently embraces text, photography and moving image. These works form part of a vast and ongoing archive documenting sites and moments of exchange.

Over the past few years Hawker has been co-creating imagery with two hives of honeybees cared for by local beekeeper Oli Chiswell on Ngunawal/Gundungurra Country. These beehives live to the north of Ngungara/Weereewa/Lake George, an endorheic lake which periodically fills and then empties of water. 

Conversations with bees evolved from research around the European ritual ‘telling the bees’, where honeybees are told of recent deaths in a beekeeper’s household. It is believed if the bees are not informed they might leave the hive and follow the deceased into the afterlife. It is understood the practice has its origins in Celtic mythology where bees are regarded as messengers between the natural world and the spirit realm; a portal connecting the living and the dead.

The photographs Hawker delivers to the hives are of ecologically disturbed sites from around Ngungara/Weereewa/Lake George, ‘informing’ the bees of the mass disappearance of more-than human lives in the roar of the Anthropocene. 

Conversing with bees is a practice of recognising and grieving the losses of a changed and changing world. Like the ever-shifting shoreline of Ngungara/Weereewa/Lake George, the exhibition Conversations with bees is a reflection on liminal or in-between spaces, and a consideration of how European mythology has become entangled within the Australian landscape, sitting ajar to Indigenous Australians own deep stories and knowledge of Country.

This exhibition was supported by CAPO (Capital Arts Patron Organisation).

Chromatogram of a dead bee, 2024, fujitran print framed in custom-built lightbox

This is a chromatogram made from the body of a dead bee (found midwinter outside a hive cared for by Billy). 

Chromatography is a photographic process commonly used by scientists to understand the chemical makeup of soil. I've been testing the process’s capacity to facilitate the visual expression of a wide range of vibrant matter. The hues and patterns that form as the solution spreads over the silver nitrate soaked paper cannot be controlled. The outcome raises questions of how memory is inscribed within materials.  

I find myself in a state of quiet awe when working with chromatography - but I was in particular awe when the bee produced this chromatogram - so reminiscent in colour and shape of a honeycomb cell.