Julie Millowick
"Julie Millowick’s work, using image and text, often addresses issues of an intensely personal nature. Photograms, cyanotypes and traditional silver gelatin documentary photographs are used in narratives which reference loss, the family, memory and emotional resilience In creating this imagery, Julie frequently uses the landscape and flora from her Central Victorian environment as symbols of, and references to, emotional statements.
Julie is a strong believer in the importance of community and this is reflected in the ongoing documentation of the people in her small country town [Fryerstown] which, like all rural communities is struggling through drought and social change. Fryerstown was the epicentre of the 1850s Gold Rush and during that era 10,000 people existed there in challenging, hostile, and sometimes tragic conditions. The major scars of that incredible assault on the environment are very prominent and are in stark contrast to more subtle and benign botanical traces. Julie uses the latter, ie those surviving plants, as a reference to the memory of the people who came to the goldfields seeking their fortune, but endured instead hardship and a longing for home.
Julie donates $2000 and $1500 to the Castlemaine State Festival and the Bendigo Art Gallery respectively for photography awards."
(Julie Millowick 2006)
