Commissioned as part of In The Air, curated by Dr Jessica Clark and exhibited at The Substation, this work is part of a group exhibition.
Read the write up in Art Guide Australia here.
sorrow for the river i, 2025
photographic scans, inkjet print on vinyl banner, 236cm x 236cm
These 5 large scale images contain scans of water and detritus from the highly polluted Queen River in Queenstown, Lutruwita/Tasmania. The colours in the scans have been manipulated to echo water testing strips, evaluating ph, alkalinity and acid levels.
The waterway is affected by over 80 years of tailings run-off from the Mount Lyell copper mine and because of this it is known as ‘unable to support life’.
The mine has since been put into ‘care and maintenance’, a term used for a closed mine that has the potential to be reopened. A feasibility study is currently underway to consider re-opening the mine.
The etymology of the word care is steeped in sorrow, lament and grief.
Waterways across our land are known to carry the spirit of the dead. Nan Viv (Vivian Brockman-Webb) once said to me “That’s why it’s so important to keep these waterways healthy, otherwise we get stuck here, and no-one wants to get stuck here.”
I dug up old family obituaries.
“The dearest spot on earth to me
Is where my dear mother Iies.”
I couldn’t help but feel deep sorrow for this river, for the mother, for the restless spirits. Where is their care and maintenance?
sorrow for the river ii, 2025
jar, water, detritus, 29cm x 12cm x 12cm
Like a snow-globe of acid rain, this jar contains water and detritus from the highly polluted Queen River in Queenstown, Lutruwita/Tasmania. The river runs a golden orange colour as the saturated metal content oxidises.
to collect with holes in your basket (i), 2023
Copper, 30cm x 30cm
To the right of the heron and the left of the fish traps.
I had a yarn with the copper.
Weaved my stories in.
And out.
Collecting the echoes of the old people.
A conduit of sound.
To be water. As breath.
To remember. As body.
to collect with holes in your basket (i) , 2023 includes a weaved copper wire sculpture suspended from the ceiling echoing the shape of a basket.
Designed to gather the unseen, the sculpture holds the minerals from watery sites of significance. It has spent time in a state of deep listening to Country, being drenched in the salt from the sea. It is in this tidal flow that the stories of both country and family are imbued into the copper filaments, repurposed speaker wire has become a conduit of ancestral knowledge.
The dispersion and attempted erasure of indigenous identity is regathered and distilled in this hole(y) basket.
Below installation images taken by Cassie Sullivan.
