A panoramic photograph documents a natural disaster where a red stain invades pristine, verdant rainforest. On close inspection the blood like stain is revealed to be lurid nineteen seventies carpet, the type of carpet found in RSL clubs and Chinese restaurants across Australia. Axminster carpet, a clever trope for the British colonisation of Australia, is meticulously laid in a secret location in Jervis Bay National Park by a team of professional carpet layers and then documented. This dramatic and Romantic intervention is Rosemary Laing’s groundspeed.

No digital manipulation has taken place to produce this series, the physical process of entering the landscape and laying carpet mimics the ongoing colonising and domesticating of native environments. This absurd, excessive act along with the Baroque patterning of the carpet speaks of our attempts to out-do nature and reminds us of the symbolism of the carpet as an exotic garden brought indoors, of tamed wilderness and nature made culture.