Emma Jackson was born in Melbourne in 1970 and spent her childhood in the Netherlands, London and West Africa, where her father worked as a geologist for Shell, the family moving as exploration required. She returned to Perth, Australia in 1979, and from 1990 to 1994 was a field assistant to the naturalist Harry Butler, surveying the impact of oil and gas operations on native fauna in the Northwest of Western Australia.
Jackson maps the Australian continent through years spent studying geological maps and research papers. Geological theories are built by conjecture around facts and contested over time; Jackson holds this spirit of provocation. Each woven map is a translation of the ground's stories, its structural behaviour, folding, faulting, erosion, volcanic activity, into colour, texture and depth. This way of working brings her into a relationship with the country she is from and her aspiration is to make caring for it contagious.
Jackson is a registered architect, holds a PhD in Architecture from RMIT, and has taught at RMIT Architecture for over two decades. She also works in an advisory capacity, using the same mapping techniques at the front end of significant building projects to find the inherent value in a site and reveal its story.
Jackson’s work is held in private collections and has been exhibited at the South Australian Museum and RMIT Design Hub Gallery.
