Alison Clouston
Two lands / Ossature
24 February – 16 March 2025
These drawings are inspired by my walks and findings in two lands – the high country huts of Aoteoroa, and the bones of wildlife found on Gundungurra country around my studio in Australia.
I have sculpted kangaroo bones into a city of model buildings. Each bodily member has an architectural counterpart – a vertebrate ridgeboard, femurs as columns, the humerus a jackstud, metatarsals for studs, a rafter a rib. Thus “Ossature”, the old word denoting the structural members of a body or a building. The ongoing sculptures became the impetus for these drawings, as I think about the indivisibility of nature and culture.
If our bodies are the houses of the self or the soul, then there are many darkened rooms, floors that might be ceilings, stairs that lead us astray.
The huts of Aoteoroa, once the haunt of musterers and Government deerstalkers, are now used by trampers and ecologists and private hunters after feral animals. The kangaroo, at once revered animal, totem to many moieties among Indigenous Australian cultures, on the National coat of arms of Australia, is yet hunted and shot by farmers as a pest, sold as pet food.
Just 5% of all known living animal species are vertebrates, animals with backbones. We mammals are a tiny group of species within this number. Yet humans and our livestock now comprise 96% of the biomass of all mammalian life on Earth. Think about it – that leaves only about 4% for all the other mammals together, the kangaroos, the numbats and wombats, the bats, the elephants, the whales and seals. Many of these are threatened with extinction.
As I handle and draw these bones, I’m struck how alike we mammalian vertebrates all are. How did we come to this human exploitation of the rest of the animal world? How are we to end the extinction crisis? We must remember, as our ancestors did, that we are kin. And we share more than genes; all mammals lovingly suckle their young, enjoy the company of family and friends, experience hope, grief, desire, pain and pleasure. I’m thinking off us all as I make my drawings.
Alison Clouston, February 2025
1: Alison Clouston, Radius Femur Joist 2024, pigmented ink, acrylic, oil pastel, coloured pencil, 1200 x 765 mm $1800
2: Alison Clouston, Humerus Step Vertebrae, 2024, pigmented ink, acrylic, oil pastel, coloured pencil, red ochre, 1200 x 765 mm
3: Alison Clouston, Broken Hip, 2024, pigmented ink, acrylic, oil pastel, coloured pencil, red ochre, 120 x 765 mm
4: Alison Clouston, Rafter and Radius, 2024, pigmented ink, acrylic, oil pastel, coloured pencil, red ochre, 1200 x 765 mm
5: Alison Clouston, Joist Tibia, 2024, pigmented ink, acrylic, oil pastel, coloured pencil, red ochre, 1200 x 765 mm
6: Alison Clouston, Fibula Gable End, 2024, pigmented ink, acrylic, oil pastel, coloured pencil, red ochre, 1200 x 765 mm
7: Alison Clouston, Metatarsal Ridge, 2024, pigmented ink, acrylic, oil pastel, coloured pencil, red ochre, 1200 x 765 mm
8: Alison Clouston, Scapula Turret 2025, pigmented ink, acrylic, oil pastel, red ochre, oil stick, 1200 x 765 mm $1800
9: Alison Clouston, Hi[ and Gable with Valleys 2025, pigmented ink, acrylic, oil pastel, coloured pencil, red ochre, 1200 x 765 mm $1800
10: Alison Clouston, Household, 2024, pigmented ink, acrylic, oil pastel, coloured pencil, red ochre, 420 x 297 mm
11: Alison Clouston, Dormer, 2024, pigmented ink, acrylic, oil pastel, coloured pencil, red ochre, 420 x 297 mm
12: Alison Clouston, Growth, 2024, pigmented ink, acrylic, oil pastel, coloured pencil, red ochre, 420 x 297 mm
13: Alison Clouston, Gable Jaw Drapery, 2024, pigmented ink, acrylic, oil pastel, coloured pencil, red ochre, 420 x 297 mm
14: Alison Clouston, Heart Tower, 2024, pigmented ink, acrylic, oil pastel, coloured pencil, red ochre, 420 x 297 mm
15: Alison Clouston, Spinous Process, 2024, pigmented ink, acrylic, oil pastel, coloured pencil, red ochre, 420 x 297 mm
16: Alison Clouston, Home Body, 2024, pigmented ink, acrylic, oil pastel, coloured pencil, red ochre, 420 x 297 mm
18: Alison Clouston, Cloaked Femur, 2024, pigmented ink, acrylic, oil pastel, coloured pencil, red ochre, 420 x 297 mm
19: Alison Clouston, Tower and Fibula Radius Rafter, 2024, pigmented ink, acrylic, oil pastel, coloured pencil, red ochre, 420 x 297 mm
20: Alison Clouston, Muscular Architecture, 2024, pigmented ink, acrylic, oil pastel, coloured pencil, red ochre, 420 x 297 mm
21: Alison Clouston, Branching Turret, 2024, pigmented ink, acrylic, oil pastel, coloured pencil, red ochre, 420 x 297 mm
22: Alison Clouston, Blanket Stitch Snug, 2024, pigmented ink, acrylic, oil pastel, coloured pencil, red ochre, 420 x 297 mm
23: Alison Clouston, Warm Ulna Ridges, 2024, pigmented ink, acrylic, oil pastel, coloured pencil, red ochre, 420 x 297 mm
24: Alison Clouston, Tilt, 2024, pigmented ink, acrylic, oil pastel, coloured pencil, red ochre, 420 x 297 mm
17: Alison Clouston, House Fibre, 2024, pigmented ink, acrylic, oil pastel, coloured pencil, red ochre, 420 x 297 mm
25: Alison Clouston, Blanket Bone Huts, 2024, pigmented ink, acrylic, oil pastel, coloured pencil, red ochre, 279 x 215 mm
26: Alison Clouston, Creeper Rafter and Nogging, 2024, pigmented ink, acrylic, oil pastel, coloured pencil, red ochre, 279 x 215 mm