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The drawings and paintings of Michelle Ussher have frequently depicted the bush or aspects of the natural environment. But while they, on the one hand, continue the long Australian artistic practice of representing the landscape, they are at the same time much removed from tradition. The bush as represented by Ussher is not isolated or unpopulated, but rather a recreational landscape, which includes campsites and picnic areas found on the periphery of national parks or reserves.
 
Alongside the foliage and vegetation in Ussher's delicately drawn and painted compositions are the paraphernalia of camping and picnicking. Tents, campfires, cars and picnic gear are all represented, beyond which the bush is safely at arm's length. Ussher is interested in temporary human occupation of the landscape. Hers is the visitor's or tourist's view of nature, one full of play and relaxation, a perspective further implied by the postcard-sized paper on which many of her works are completed and by the display of these works as a series of holiday snapshots.
 
The suggestion of being at one remove from nature is reinforced by Ussher's technique of depicting the landscape. Her works, which are on paper as well as wall drawings, are not painted en plein air. Instead they begin as collections of photographs and sketches which she arranges as a collage, experimenting with composition and colour. These working diagrams - which Ussher changes or adds to over time with no predetermined idea of the final composition - are then translated into paintings or drawings using either graphite or a bright rainbow of watercolour or colour pencils. The primary source material for Ussher is not nature itself but, instead, pre-existing representations of it. In this way, Ussher draws attention to the contemporary urban experience of the natural environment - that is, through imagery rather than lived experience.
 
Potted plants have also been a feature of Ussher's practice, either appearing in her paintings or drawings, or otherwise installed in the exhibition space alongside her two-dimensional works. Here Ussher alludes to our domestic experience of nature; nature contained and cultivated. Other paintings and drawings show overgrown backyard gardens or creeping undergrowth encroaching on the built environment.
 
In more recent works, such as Picnichead II, 2006, which appears on the back cover of the September 2006 issue of Art & Australia, Ussher moves away from a direct depiction of nature. In Picnichead II a figure stands at a picnic table surrounded by bags, a coat and drinking utensils, among other items. While nature is not directly represented, it is perhaps suggested by the colourful dreadlocks which cover the figure's face like the fronds of a fern, and the shoes the figure is wearing which resemble the cloven hooves of an animal. This move away from the representation of the environment is intentional on Ussher's part and represents a turning point in her thinking about nature. She is increasingly interested in nature as it relates not only to the environment, but also to human behaviour.
 
Ussher's focus on campsites has a particular relevance to Australia. She has previously described how 'all colonies begin as campsites'.  In a collaborative work with Helen Johnson for the 2006 Melbourne Art Fair, this association between campsites and colonisation was extended in a project that explored Ussher's curiosity about the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra. The embassy was established on the lawns outside Parliament House in Canberra on Australia Day in 1972 as a protest against the Federal Government's refusal to recognise Aboriginal land rights. It is perhaps Australia's most famous campsite and, despite attempts at its removal, is now a permanent fixture in Canberra's physical landscape and an enduring reminder of Australian Indigenous peoples' rights to land. In Ussher's work the campsite as comfort zone has become the campsite as political protest, revealing a strong critical undercurrent in the artist's practice.
 
Ussher was born in Moree and grew up in Kempsey in northern New South Wales. She studied industrial design at the University of Newcastle before relocating to Melbourne to study painting at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and drawing at the Victorian College of the Arts. Ussher has had solo and group exhibitions in Victoria and New South Wales. In 2005 she was included in 'Primavera' at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, and the 2006 Adelaide Biennial. From 2005 to 2006 she was an artist-in-residence at Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces in Melbourne. Ussher is a founding member of CLUBSproject inc., an artist-run initiative in Melbourne.
 
 
Michelle Ussher is represented by Darren Knight Gallery in Sydney.
 
Claire Armstrong