Goanna skin 2008

Doris Platt worked as a cattle-musterer near Coen in central Cape York, where the goanna – an important food source – is present in abundance. Goanna skin visualises the discarded remains of the large reptile after being hunted and skinned.

Laid out on the ground below, the animal loses its three-dimensional appearance and becomes a flat, abstracted shape, which can be seen through free-flowing white-yellow lines painted across a black background (the negative space defines the creature’s silhouette). The bold, dark colour represents the skin of Platt’s people, the fertile central Cape York dirt on which the goanna was cooked, and the heat drawn from the earth that creates its charred appearance.