Edge of the Garden
The Photography of Shan Turner-Carroll
Bodyboards fished from the dam where they had spent hot summer days in Lovedale, on Wonnarua Country. Crutches collected and kept for safe-keeping after each broken leg or rolled ankle. A harness which had belonged to their donkey, Malcolm.
Fireweed and wildflowers plucked from the bush surrounding their home. Thirty year-old carpet pulled from a single-room shed they had lived in for seven years. Dust and dirt encrusted on the hands of each family member who had each spent seven years building the mud brick home they still live in to this day.
In Edge of the Garden (2020), Shan Turner-Carroll photographed his family adorned in wearable art made from objects found in and around his family home. Created during the 2020 Covid-19 lockdowns, Turner-Carroll described the process as playful and imaginative.
The act of collaborating with loved ones, rifling through his mother’s odd collection of meaningful objects, became a love letter to his family and his childhood home. As a queer person of colour living and making art in a regional town, Edge of the Garden represents Shan’s unique connection to the area, while simultaneously asserting its incorporation into the cultural narrative of Australia.
