Secure the shadow 2
Anne Ferran

1995
type c photograph
86.5 x 62 cm

Description
Type c photograph of a rat’s nest from the Hyde Park Barracks archaeological collection.

Significance statement  
The installation Secure the shadow was the first investigation by contemporary visual artists of the female inmates of the 19th-century Hyde Park Barracks Asylum and Immigrants DepoT Artists Anne Brennan and Anne Ferran sifted through official records and surviving archaeological fragments to produce photographic works and a collection of handmade books which offered an alternative story of silence and loss.

Ferran’s Secure the shadow 2 photographic series documents rat’s nests found beneath the Barracks’ floorboards. The nests yielded a unique collection of scavenged material, personal items deliberately hidden under the floorboards, and small items lost through the cracks. Of their investigation of the Barracks collection, Ferran and Brennan wrote:

‘To say that the contents of these plastic bags are dirty is an understatement. In many cases the contents look like rubbish, or worse. It is fascinating to look at them but at first they don’t say anything … It takes a little time before any of the fabric pieces begin to distinguish themselves from one another. When this happens it is perhaps analogous to (or is itself) the beginning of a new language forming.’

History
The Secure the shadow 2 series was produced for the Secure the shadow exhibition at the Hyde Park Barracks from 26 August to 8 October 1995. The series was the outcome of the Historic Houses Trust’s (HHT) first artists in residence scheme at the Barracks. The HHT acquired seven works from this series and 19 works from the exhibition.

Maker biography
Anne Ferran works primarily in photomedia and across video, installation art and writing. Much of her recent work examines the residues of Australia's colonial past, especially in relation to the lives of women and children. Her interest in highly charged and poignant fragments of people's lives has led her to work with archives, museum collections and historic sites in Sydney, Canberra, Tasmania, New Zealand and the UK. In 2002 she was artist in residence at the National Museum of Australia and she is a recipient of the NSW Women and Arts Fellowship. Ferran is regularly invited to exhibit in curated museum exhibitions and her work is represented in most major public collections in Australia. She exhibits widely and is currently preparing for a major solo survey exhibition at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery in 2007.

Museum number
HHT2002/1-13

Image credit
Jenni Carter

Bibliography  
Brennan, Anne & Ferran, Anne, Secure the shadow [exhibition catalogue], Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales, Sydney, 1995
Brennan, Anne & Ferran, Anne, ‘Secure the shadow’, Photofile, No 45, 1995, pp32–36
Kelso, Jane, ‘Secure the shadow: Anne Brennan and Anne Ferran’, Public History Review, Vol 4, 1995, p149
Petersen, John, Hyde Park Barracks Museum: guidebook, Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales, Glebe, 2003