Yoking it up with Marian Drew
- Cynthia Sciberras
- Mar 4
- 4 min read
Updated: Mar 6
Exploring Australian artist Marian Drew’s cultural influences, and the broader impact of her work on the perception of beauty and social narratives.
Is there a guiding philosophy or mantra?
What motivates my work is my experiences with the natural world and how I might share those experiences with others through my photographic art practice. The camera and photographic processes are an opportunity to probe and inquire into how I might represent changing relationships with the natural world.
What does photography represent to you in an increasingly precarious world of the digital age and technology of smart phones?
Photography has changed radically in the context of what we can believe the photograph represents. The massive scale of photographic reproduction means that photographs are everywhere we look. Through our communication on smart phones, we use them like a language. This proliferation means we are swamped by this one way of seeing the world. Furthermore, AI generated images and computer software means that we can’t believe what we see, not that we ever could. In that photographs are shaping how we see the world I work to create alternatives to the traditional photographic view.
What were the pivotal moments or experiences that lead you to photograph the ‘Australiana Still Life’ series?
This series was made using a medium format film camera. I scanned the film to print on cotton paper. There is no manipulation of the file in Photoshop, other than colour correction, contrast and brightness. This was important to me because I was interested in the way the camera records ‘painted light’, by which I mean, using a hand-held torch to light the subject over extended exposure times. In this work I wanted to make connections to the painting tradition of the historic genre of still life, because I saw parallels between this tradition. I saw that the attitudes to animals in those painted historic works could explain the inherited contemporary attitudes to roadkill in Australia. Those historical paintings showed a way of thinking that suggested humans had dominion over all other creatures, that their existence was a God given human resource.
Growing up in Central Queensland, seeing roadkill beside roads was part of life. It is understood as a consequence of urban growth, fast cars and encroached animal habitats. Like a lot of other people, I wanted to bring attention to the death of so many wild animals from cars and feral animals. I thought that by using the familiar art genre, the historic still life, I could help audiences actually look at a dead animal, because we often look away. I worked to make the photographs beautiful, to draw audiences closer and through their extended observation and the context of the domestic in the still life tradition, think about how connected they are to our life.
How do you think creativity and perceptions of beauty shaped your early life, and how do these influences continue to inform your work today?
Growing up I didn’t think about creativity. It was just a way to solve problems. I think the ability to be creative is the idea of being resourceful and flexible, and thinking of alternate ways of doing things. In art, alternate ways of doing things, means showing something in new ways, so it can be seen. We stop seeing when something becomes too habitual or familiar. Also, I have found, having limitations helps one become more resourceful, and that gets the creative juices flowing. I grew up on a sugar cane plantation which was all order and control, so the natural world offered a great contrast to that monocultural farming. It was a place of the imagination, of deep history and earthly time, and of the nonhuman.
Reflecting on the past decade, what are some of your proudest achievements, either personally or professionally?
Professionally, in the past decade I am proud that I have continued to make artwork that responds to the times. I just completed a PhD at the Canberra School of Art and Design, Australian National University, which pushed me into new ways of working and thinking about photographic representation. With so much change in the world, and with so much at stake, it’s important to keep thinking about human impacts on the world and what it means for the future.
Your art often blends themes of culture, identity, and beauty. How does your work engage with Australian identity, and in what ways do you hope it reshapes conversations about gender, culture, and creative expression within visual storytelling?
These are big questions not easily answered here. I am interested in not so much Australian identity, but more broadly the human condition, what it means to be alive now in Australia and what are our ethical responsibilities. I have long grappled with questions of how we determine beauty in art. Beauty is a powerful tool in art, but ideas and their expression in various forms can be beautiful. In my work I concentrate on the beautiful to keep my enchantment with the natural world alive. I think if we practice aesthetic appreciation in art, we can take that experience out into the world. By thinking about what we find beautiful, we start to see things in fresh ways, find beauty in unexpected places, and think more ethically.
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