Emily Byrne
Project Title: Self and Symbol: The use of Ancestral Ritual and Symbol in Therapeutic Art Making
Emily Byrne (she/her) is an Irish Australian woman living, practising, and treading lightly on Dharawal country, on the South coast of NSW. As an emerging art therapist, she is deeply interested in the ways embodied expression might support healing in therapeutic spaces.
Emily grew up in the bush northwest of Sydney and has always connected deeply to nature and creative practices. She also enjoys relating deeply with other people, and the course of her life flowed naturally into the study of Art Therapy. Emily is constantly humbled by the power of intention and presence in interpersonal connection, movement, creation, and the natural environment. It is her passion to bring this intrinsic knowing to her work with others.
Throughout her formal studies of fine arts, creative writing, counselling and yoga, she questioned how one might relate to place, self, and others in a so-called “Australian” context. She became curious at the spiritual intersection of place and person and asked, as Sarah Johnston once asked, “Who am I in this skin, on this land, and in this time?” Emily found that a deep knowing of self, including one’s own ancestral stories and practices, may be a helpful anchor from which to respectfully relate to this world, and she dived deeply into research on this topic.
Emily recognises a need for creative practices which support cultural reconnection and identity, acknowledging the importance of symbols, rituals, stories, and myths in the continuation of cultural lines. She has embarked on a self-ethnographic research project, connecting with her own fragmented cultural knowing and translating this into several artworks. Over nine art-making sessions, Emily explored the beliefs, practices, rituals, stories and symbols of her ancestors. Each piece weaves her own story with the stories of her people and acts as a bridge across continents and through time.
It is Emily’s hope that this approach may also support others to navigate life in a contemporary context; where stories and symbols must transcend geographical locations, and where many long for a connection to their roots. Emily has found her research project to be a rich and joyful experience and hopes this approach may be the inception of something which grows and extends into the world beyond.
Lino Print on Paper
Tasmanian Blackwood Frame
21cm x 21cm
“Rising Moon” explores dualities; light and dark, land and sky, sun and moon, night and day. An early piece in my arts-based research process, it emerged as I conceptualised both nature-based spirituality and monotheistic religion.
Lino Print on Paper
21cm x 21cm
“Rising Sun” is in conversation with “Rising moon.” They discuss the possibility of “spiral time,” in which the sun and the moon rise at once. The spirit of the land is echoed in a church’s stained glass window.
Lino Print on Paper
36cm x 36cm
“A Dark Call Home” is a longing for one’s homeland. One’s present soul reaches for the soul of their ancestors. Across seas, they call to each other in a song of smoke and flame.
Lino Print on Paper
36cm x 36cm
“Light Across Land and Through Time” explores the possibility of dual cultural identity - in being both here and there, if only for a moment. As the sun and moon hang in the same sky, two halves are united.
Lino Print on Paper
36cm x 36cm
“Spinning Wheel Moon” speaks to the pagan wheel of the year in which seasons, equinoxes, and solstices are acknowledged in their circular, repeated occurrence. As the wheel spins in darkness, so too do the three ancestral beings of past, present, and future.
Lino Print on Paper
36cm x 36cm
“Spinning Wheel Sun” explores the integration of ancient, nature based spirituality into the present day. The sun rises and the ancestors dance as the wheel spins once again.
Lino Print on Paper
67cm x 51cm
“Winter Solstice Dancers” imagines a new lens through which to see our present landscape. Spirits of smoke and fire dance in the winter sky as the river flows through the valley. They each keep a wheel turning.
Lino Print on Paper
67cm x 51cm
In “Summer Solstice Dancers,” the spirits continue to dance as seasons change and night becomes day. They are the sacred three: “past, present and future”, “land, sea and sky”, “life, death and rebirth.” An old way of being is remembered.
Woodfired Ceramic Vessels
21cm x 8cm x 8cm and 14cm x 14cm x 14cm
These vessels were made and fired in my family’s wood fire kiln. Their distinct forms represent masculine and feminine - duality and balance. They reminded me of my supportive family, and the balance needed for this research journey.
Lino Print on Paper
67cm x 51cm
“Soft Spiral” honours the interconnection of all beings, all places, and all times. As smoke and flame spiral upwards, water and cyclones spiral downward. We move both inwards and outwards, upwards and downwards, along spiralling lines.