Claudia

An Ode to Picnic at Hanging Rock.

A reflection on colonisation, the feminine, and the anxiety of the unknown within Australian nature, particularly the ocean.

This series draws on the legacy of Picnic at Hanging Rock, a cornerstone of Australian cinema, to explore the psychological and spiritual weight of colonisation and the enduring mystery embedded in the landscape.

Like the house in a gothic novel, nature here is both familiar and unknowable. It seduces and unsettles. It is at once nourishment and death.

As J. Lindsay wrote in Picnic at Hanging Rock, “We are hopeless misfits in time and place.” But perhaps there is beauty in that misfit identity, a haunted beauty that speaks to our feelings of estrangement and longing.