Harry Nankin works with cameraless photographic processes. Often making work outdoors in the natural environment, he addresses ecological issues through direct contact techniques that record traces of nature. In 2007 Nankin began making work at Lake Tyrrell, an ancient salt lake in Victoria’s Mallee that has suffered environmental degradation since colonisation. The lake, a site of Indigenous cultural and astronomical significance, is dry most of the year, but when filled with water it provides a glass-like mirror to the sky. Over a three-year period, Nankin created works in the dry bed of the lake by exposing films to starlight. Before making his exposures, he placed his films underneath historical astronomical glass-plate negatives, connecting the heavens with the earth through a performative and site-specific process. For Nankin, the lake is a metaphor for the global environmental crisis. In his series Instructions for mending the world, he pairs his starlight exposures from Lake Tyrrell with photograms of muslin. By pairing images of the night sky with images of cloth, Nankin aims to illuminate and explore ideas about connection and repair, realigning the earth and the cosmos through poetic juxtapositions.