"Field Samples" 2024-25 and "Blood test results" 2024

Norton Fredericks

Born 1990, Tulmur/Ipswich, Queensland. Aboriginal Australian and European. Lives and works in Kombumerri Country/Gold Coast, Queensland. Pronouns: they/them.

 

"Field Samples" 2024–25

bunchy sedge, sword and asparagus fern, blue cow pea, cumbungi (broad-leaved cattail), mangrove and common native reed, cyanotype on paper

 

Courtesy of Norton Fredericks, Kombumerri Country, Gold Coast.

 

"Blood test results" 2024

cyanotype on paper

 

Courtesy of Norton Fredericks, Kombumerri Country, Gold Coast, made with support from Outer Space.

 

To make Field Samples, Norton Fredericks engaged with two highly contaminated sites in Meanjin/Brisbane that contain per/polyfluoroalkyl substances—otherwise known as ‘forever chemicals’. Forever chemicals are exceptionally stable chemical compounds which are resistant to degradation. Used in chemical agriculture, cleaning products, commercial manufacturing, and more, their ubiquity means they can be found throughout the biosphere on a planetary scale, from waterways and soil to Arctic ice and breastmilk.

 

Fredericks’s research-based practice involved visiting these toxic sites, collecting native plant specimens to create impressions of their forms, and developing the cyanotypes in contaminated water. The results recorded in Blood Test are derived from the artist’s own body, registering its anatomical contamination by these same chemicals.

 

The cyanotype is a camera-less photographic process with colonial lineages related to the impetus to capture the natural world and to categorise it into taxonomies aligned with Western knowledge systems. Subverting these colonial inheritances, Fredericks turns their attention to the local and the molecular, using the cyanotype to evidence the material traces of forever chemicals to visualise our post-natural present. In this way, Fredericks reveals how the toxic colonial legacies of chemical manufacturing have permeated through all environments, atmospheres, and beings. Through the introduction of native plant species—such as bunchy sedge, blue cow pea, and mangrove—selected for their ability to phytoremediate and heal soil and waterways, Fredericks gestures towards First Nations’ land-management practices that maintain ecological balance.