Purrumbete Verandah

Purrumbete Verandah, was produced to explore alternative approaches towards documentary-making. The video work examines the documentation of place in relation to narrative. The landscape paintings of Eugene Von Guérard painted in 1858 informed the work, as early documentation of locations in the Western District of Victoria. Purrumbete Verandah is a video representation of two paintings by Von Guérard. These paintings are used as reference points to generate documentary content that is being used in the development of a web system that utilises mapping to explore the visual representation of place in an online interactive documentary. This research forms part of an ongoing investigation into visual anthropology using digital technologies and ethnographic documentary practice. Purrumbete Verandah was created for the Stony Rises project and went through a rigorous peer review process before being selected for the (NETS) touring exhibition. A chapter on the work is featured in the Designing Place (Melbourne Books) publication. The video work has been included in education resources and presented in the Von Guérard Professional Learning Event at the National Gallery Victoria (NGV) as supporting material to the Eugene Von Guérard, Nature Revealed exhibition (2011).The video work was also included in a review of the exhibition in The Age newspaper.