Panoramic View of Albany (Kinjarling), The Place of Rain

Sohan Ariel Hayes is an internationally recognised Perth-based media artist who has dedicated his art practice to socially engaged collaborations and is known for large-scale projection installation art. His mode of enquiry is often site-based and concerned with understanding connections to country, and this has led to several profound collaborations with Indigenous artists to create works that have had a strong local resonance as well as global impact. 

Hayes’ three-channel digital video presents a reimagining of Robert Dale’s famous hand-coloured etching, Panoramic view of King George Sound (1834), which was circulated throughout Europe in the nineteenth century to show off the newly established colonies in Western Australia. 

Using digital animation, Hayes has transformed Dale’s etching into a moving image which depicts a great storm sweeping, obscuring and erasing the horizon, and brings human figures, animals and plants to life. The artwork depicts both native and introduced plants and animals, and the artist has described the work as a ‘eulogy of native species lost to invasive species’. This work reflects on First Nations peoples’ experiences of this place prior to and after colonisation, as well as their deep connection to Country and respect for the land.