Tree Studies series

"I'm trying to find ways to imbue the works I make with a sense of having been witnesses to time," McMahon says.

For McMahon, the Awabakal and Glenrock nature reserves are his "version of church". His connection with this five-kilometre strip of coastal bush has been growing, he says, as he gets older. "There's a lot of variety in the vegetation. The way the trees grow and twist – certain gnarly angles – you know, it's always just right."

But he is conscious that the landscape, as he puts it, "has witnessed lots of things". "Things that have happened in Australia's history that are unspoken. Acts of violence, for instance, in areas that we think of as pristine nature. I've never been really good at exploring that in an overt way. But I feel I am making work that has this sense of silently witnessing something, so that the unspoken thing is still there, embedded in the piece."

~ Sebastian Smee, art critic

Excerpt from article in Sydney Morning Herald, September 26, 2017