Watch this on your iPod - Vodcast available here

When Perth-based artist Kate McMillan was a child, she sat in the back of her parents' car as the drove through Western Australia's Ludlow Tuart Forest and thought two things - "it's so beautiful and get me the hell out of here..."

Kate's work for the Sydney Biennale, Islands of incarceration, links a disused timber drying shed on Cockatoo Island, with the forest, which was the site of the 1841 Wonnerup Massacre.

Positioned at the top of the island, the work, in its weather-exposed position, is a poetic evocation of place that simultaneously watches over and haunts the island.

She discusses how personal memory and landscape can evoke and represent history and trauma.

This artist talk was filmed on Cockatoo Island on Saturday 15 May 2010 for the 17th Biennale of Sydney.