Judy Barrass was inspired to make this work following an artist residency she undertook in the historic gold mining town of Hill End in New South Wales. She was struck by how the separation of land into parcels for mining or farming resembled ‘patch work’ and set out to create a work that represented the land from which it came (using clay collected locally) and that, when opened, was able to follow the contours of the surface on which it rested, just as mining leases in the area where depicted on maps as ‘layer’ over the Hill End landscape.