You seem to move between mediums fluidly in following an idea — how important is the medium for you?

The medium is critical for me as a vehicle for translating what it is I am trying to express. I will sometimes wait many years before finding the right material to convey what it is I am wanting to express. The authenticity of a photograph will speak very differently from a painting of the same subject by the fact of it having physically captured the light of the subject it is depicting. It is not a translation in the same sense that a painting is. A cast object will convey its meaning very differently from a carved one because of how it holds the history of the vessel.

Wood, bone, clay, all hold the nature of their histories, their relationship to the earth, as well as the specific feel and surface of their materiality. Stone holds the weight and gravitas of its creation, the sense of the eternal. Video involves time and movement, intransience; paper, a sense of the ephemeral.

You've talked about your sense of connection with nature — how does this inform you as an artist?

I believe my connection to nature is fundamental to my life, and therefore, to my art. Much of what I am interested in expressing rises up from the relationship I see between ourselves and the natural world. Living close to the bush and to the sea for over thirty years this connection has become indispensable to how I exist. It appears to me that there is a big disconnect between humans and the natural world, and this has become a primary focus in my work, particularly my poetry, and my installation work.

In your Anthropocene series, you articulate a vision of humanity's mortality. Do you see the end of humanity as a tragic event, or something more akin to a natural process?

I think there are personal tragedies in a life, and in human histories, but on a planetary scale I see our eventual extinction as an inevitable part of a cycle of change that has been happening since the planet first formed. As humans we are pushing the rate of this change, but on a larger scale, as it might be measured by universal forces, the end of humanity is part of an inevitable cycle of change. This doesn't mean that I am indifferent to the idea of our mortality, but one must accept it, the way each of us must accept our own eventual deaths.

Tragedies are personal, so the demise of those we love is experienced as a tragedy. If I am entirely honest I would have to say that I do not consider the idea of the end of humanity as a tragedy. To witness it happening in real time would be another thing entirely.

Does this work aim to waken us to environmental action, or is it intended to help us accept our mortality?

I think there is a bit of both these ideas in my work, especially my video installation and my poetry. I believe that without a deep emotional connection or love of the environment it is hard to feel a responsibility for it. If my work can deepen and awaken a sense of this connection then it has done its job.

Video works I have made that address our mortality — The Immortals, for instance — are intended to speak to the continuity and cyclic nature of all life on earth: a passing forward of the atoms that we borrow for a short while before handing them back to the earth. How good a job we make of the handing on is also up for consideration as a subject for exploration.