{"product_id":"the-colony-liss-fenwick","title":"Liss Fenwick: The Colony","description":"\u003cp\u003e72 pages Paperback\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p2\"\u003eLiss Fenwick’s\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"s2\"\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Colony\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/span\u003eis a book about books – and what happens when their authority is quietly and actively undone. Set in the distant north of the Australian continent,\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"s2\"\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Colony\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e– Fenwick’s first photobook with Perimeter Editions – reflects on the book as a dominant form of human knowledge, and its role in a long, often destructive relationship with other forms of intelligence and history.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p2\"\u003eMade on Larrakia and Wulna Country, the project sees Fenwick return to the region depicted in their acclaimed debut book\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"s2\"\u003e\u003ci\u003eHumpty Doom\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e(Bad News Books, 2023), which was photographed around the artist’s hometown of Humpty Doo, Northern Territory, where they grew up on unceded land in a settler family. But where\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"s2\"\u003e\u003ci\u003eHumpty Doom\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/span\u003eswayed closer to the documentary genre, here Fenwick shifts positions, enlisting an unlikely team of co-authors – a termite colony living beneath their childhood home. Gathering books inherited from schoolrooms and family shelves – texts steeped in frontier myths, one-sided histories, and the erasure of First Nations cultures – Fenwick fed the selection of colonial volumes to the termites and then photographed the remains: a dense, sculptural language of tunnels, voids, and clay scaffolds.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p2\"\u003eUsing photography as both witness and collaborator, Fenwick allows collapse and digestion to reshape the dominant narrative, reversing these books’ presumed authority. The termites’ act of destruction becomes a generative act, dismantling certainty and returning knowledge to the soil, altered and unfinished. Woven amongst the pages of\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"s2\"\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Colony\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/span\u003eare photographs of colossal termite mounds, which appear as ancient, ghostly, monoliths piercing the landscape – their immense forms giving little indication of the assiduous, living commune within.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p3\"\u003eFenwick’s photographs give precedence to native ecology and organic process over the hierarchy of structure and control; an active unlearning of the settler mindset that remains deeply entangled in contemporary Australia. In this book, the colonial fantasy is eaten away, hollowed out from within.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Perimeter Editions","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44065267449921,"sku":"9781922545596","price":65.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0125\/3179\/3984\/files\/The-Colony.jpg?v=1781745788","url":"https:\/\/qagoma.store\/products\/the-colony-liss-fenwick","provider":"QAGOMA Store","version":"1.0","type":"link"}