The Lodge, & Am I In Your Way?

Visual Art Exhibition Review | Brian Rope

The Lodge | Amala Groom

Am I In Your Way? | Raquel Ormella

Canberra Contemporary | 3 May – 12 July 2025

Readers who are not familiar with Australia’s national capital city and, in particular, the design and purpose of its central area might like to look at TheWalter Burley and Marion Mahony Griffin Design Drawings of the City of Canberra and/or read material about the design, such as thisWikipedia article.

Am I in your way? extends Raquel Ormella’s career-long focus on the visual cultures of protest and resistance. This exhibition takes as its starting point the location of the Canberra Contemporary gallery in which it is on display - at the centre of the Parliamentary Triangle looking out onto Lake Burley Griffin and across it towards and beyond the base of that triangle - as a site to consider past and present formations of national identities. 

The work activates the view down Walter Burley Griffin’s designed sightline between Parliament House and the Australian War Memorial, passing through the centre of the International Flag Display on Commonwealth Place. Drawings, flags and performance works in the exhibition look at how political protestors have used their bodies as direct forms of passive disruption. 

Inked messages on the front or reverse of, or alongside, found vintage Canberra postcards are both entertaining and significant. Likewise, messages on created banners both challenge and amuse us.

Raquel Ormella, 'One bomb vs many' 2025, installation view, 'Am I in your way_', Canberra Contemporary, 2025, ink on found vintage Canberra postcards, dimensions variable. Photo by Brenton McGeachie

Raquel Ormella, 'Am I in your way_', 2025, installation view, Canberra Contemporary, 2025. Photo by Brian Rope

Raquel Ormella, 'Am I in your way_', 2025, installation view, Canberra Contemporary, 2025. Photo by Brenton McGeachie_2

Raquel Ormella, 'future history #1', 2025, installation view, 'Am I in your way_', Canberra Contemporary, 2025,  nylon, 90 x 170cm. Photo by Brenton McGeachie

In an environment where attitudes towards legitimate disruption and protest are changing, this exhibition is a timely exploration of an emerging criminalisation of what might simply be no more than an inconvenience for passers-by or bystanders.

The second exhibition being shown in the adjacent gallery space is The Lodge, named after the Prime Minister’s residence. It is the third moving image work in Amala Groom’s Raised by Wolves series exploring the relationship between alchemy (spirit) and science (matter), following the belief that life is a marriage of these forces, with the human being as the ultimate construct between them.

This excellent 11:11 minutes single-channel video work connects strongly with Groom’s personal history of direct action at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy located within the Parliamentary Triangle, and her many years of political engagement both inside and outside the walls of Parliament House. Her returning to Ngunnawal country to film this artwork is important; it is both ceremonial and cyclical. In doing so, she has reactivated her ancestral songlines (the Aboriginal walking routes that crossed the country, linking important sites and locations), and this resultant autobiographical (in nature) work is a reweaving of both history and the future.

Wearing a typically long and white wedding dress, Groom herself symbolically weaves and unravels a red rope (commonly used as a symbol of protection, unity, and unbreakable bonds) along Anzac Parade, embodying both the colonial structural constraints Indigenous people faced (and still do) and the profound role ancestors play in spirituality, offering guidance and a sense of belonging. The work culminates in her transformation; empowered by the campfire that burns constantly at the Tent Embassy, she is seen running through Parliament House then ultimately vanishing into the bush as a sovereign Wiradyuri woman.

Amala Groom, The Lodge 2025 production still, single channel video. Image credit Ryan Andrew Lee_10

Amala Groom, The Lodge 2025 production still, single channel video. Image credit Ryan Andrew Lee_2

Amala Groom, The Lodge 2025 production still, single channel video. Image credit Ryan Andrew Lee_4

Amala Groom, The Lodge 2025 production still, single channel video. Image credit Ryan Andrew Lee_7

In this work, Groom has reclaimed what we might think of as “the heart of the Australian state” created by all who came after those we now refer to as our First Peoples. For many, many years previously the area of country now within the Parliamentary Triangle was a sacred place used by those First Peoples for corroborees and tribal indigenous gatherings. Visitors to the exhibition should view the entire video, waiting as necessary to watch it from the start, taking in its significant messages, thinking about the significance of various shapes they see, and admiring the very professional performance and film quality. Then read the artist statement and the exhibition essay to understand more fully what they have viewed.

These two exhibitions both present profound and important messages. Together the messages are enhanced and strengthened.

This review is also available on the author's blog here.

Watching Me, Watching You

Photography and Videography | Brian Rope

Watching Me, Watching You | Jemima Campey

Tuggeranong Arts Centre Foyer | 8 to 29 October 2022

Jemima Campey (Ngunnawal/Ngambri lands) graduated from the Australian National University in 2021 with degrees in English and Visual Arts. She is currently completing her Honours in Visual Arts.

 

Campey makes photos, performances, installations and films. Through the use of appropriated and reworked materials which are borrowed from a day-to-day context, she touches various overlapping themes and strategies, including performance and contemporary culture. Her text and photographic works are often deeply personal, providing insight into her act of making art.

 

I’ve previously seen only a little of Campey’s artwork – videos in which she examined the phenomenon of the ‘apology video’, exploring how the spread of social media was impacting and re-shaping the nature of peoples’ emotions.

 

In this exhibition, Watching Me, Watching You, she has worked with both appropriated material and newly created photographs, and presents a selection of her recent works, united by their focus on the intersections of contemporary culture, online behaviours, and performance.

 

She has drawn from her own experiences growing up during the rise of social media and from the writings of Rayne Fisher-Quaan, a Canadian political commentator who, aged seventeen, created the organisation March for Our Education to lead student actions protesting the repeal of the sex education content of a Health and Physical Education curriculum.

 

Campey has used video and photography to make sense of some aspects of online life and subcultures that may not be well known to those who do not engage with particular trends or online platforms. A 500cm long inkjet print titled Doomscrolling reveals the types of interactions that might be read on some platforms, such as Pinterest. Here is just a tiny section of the text on the scroll:

 

SHE IS BEAUTIFUL. HER BODY IS BEAUTIFUL. With that said, she is clearly tilting a lot and flexing to make herself look thinner and more toned. she’s also using the clothing to her advantage to make her body look how she wants, which is her right, just remember that everything on the internet can be so tainted and altered from its natural state.

 

And one response to that:

 

yesss, thank you also notice that she like purposely took her shirt off for the pic

 

We all know that social media can infiltrate almost every part of our lives. We can present ourselves to others in whatever way we choose. Some opt to perform for their audience, whom they may or may not know, to create the image they wish to portray. Doing so raises such questions as “What are the impacts of adopting a moral superiority within your online persona and brand?”

 

Campey does not claim to answer these questions. Rather, she considers how authenticity and perception come into play in various online spaces, such as dating apps.

 

That’s All I Have to Say (a 9-channel digital video which runs for a little over three minutes) is intriguing. It is important to put on the headphones and listen to the words spoken by numerous people whilst viewing the images scattered on the screen.

 

That’s All I Have To Say. 2021. Still from video 03_07

Lovers’ Hands, (a ten-minute long looped video screening within a lovely and very small handmade frame) is also well worth close inspection.

 

Lovers Hands (2021). Installation image supplied. Digital video and handmade frame. 10_02, looped

There is a performance video piece, Routine, showing the artist herself engaging in a somewhat drawn-out and surreal process performing wellness and wellness-related activities – skincare, vitamins, hair brushing and so on.

 

Routine (still) 27_45. 2022

 

And to complete this modest but thoughtful exhibition, there is just one photograph. It is a self-portrait, Saint Belle, again focussing on the wellness industry, which is booming as consumers spend on products to improve their health, fitness, nutrition, appearance, sleep, and mindfulness.

 

Saint Belle. 2022. Inkjet print, 84.1x59.4 cm

This review was first published online on 17/10/22 by the Canberra Times here and then in print (page 27) on 24/10/22. It is also available on the author's blog here.

Resilience: Yet Here We Are

Photography | Brian Rope

Resilience: Yet Here We Are | Flavia Abdurahman and Gabor Dunajszky

Belco ARTS, Pivot Gallery | UNTIL 9 OCTOBER 2022

I am a man, raised in the Christian tradition, with minimal knowledge of Islam, with no memories of my childhood war zone experience, who’s never visited Afghanistan. How can I review an exhibition about Afghan Muslim women in war zones? I’ll do my best!

Resilience: Yet Here We Are uses video by Flavia Abdurahman and photographs by Gabor Dunajszky. Both speak about seeing themselves as resilient. The people shown in the work certainly are. This is about amazing social structures supporting people - traumatised women nevertheless feeding, supporting and caring for their families. A definition of resilience. They are still there, doing the things they need to, despite all their experiences.

At the time of filming her Afghanistan footage, Abdurahman was an independent video journalist, specialising in short documentaries and current affairs. Her clients included the UN Mission to Afghanistan’s Public Information Office and the Afghan Ministry of Women’s Affairs.

The video features parts of footage for the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, 2005-6, and of a journey shooting video of Afghan women and girls, 2003-6. It’s a female video journalist’s view; but speaks to us all. Powerfully. Inviting us to observe, and absorb, human dignity. To appreciate why she considers the Minister is a hero. Ideally, we should watch the Ministry of Women documentary before viewing ‘The Journey.’

Purple girl at WD at Blue Mosque (video still) - Flavia Abdurahman

Blushing Bride to be (video still) - Flavia Abdurahman

One clip is titled Endless Life, specifically to draw attention to civilian resilience in the face of the post-Cold War military doctrine of "Endless War". Abdurahman suggests that our former federal government’s policy aspiration to make Australia a "Top Ten” defence exporter means that, in order to make the defence industry profitable, the Anglo-American sphere would need to create more “Afghanistans.” And that means we should learn from the resilience of the Afghans. She hopes viewers of her videos appreciate the factual depictions of heroism; unassuming, humble and very human. 

Dunajszky is a well-experienced humanitarian aid worker who happens to take photographs – following a family tradition. He first worked in Afghanistan in 2001 shortly after the fall of the Taliban.

The photographs were recorded where the residents – despite their “normal” living conditions having been destroyed by earthquakes, war zones, and the like – retained their humanity and continued their everyday lives under very difficult conditions, relying on their resilience, good humour and belief in a better future.

The black and white photos are, perhaps, more powerful than his coloured works. The people photos are the most emotive. His portraits of “a young Afghan Lady,” and of then Minister of Women’s Affairs Dr Jalal during an unguarded moment reveal much.

Dr Massouda Jalal, the then Minister of Women's Affairs, 2004-6 - Gabor Dunajszky

Images of boys playing in a Kabul scrapyard, and of a desecrated graveyard, tell us much more than their specific content.

A Graveyard in Herat - Gabor Dunajszky

Together, the photos and video provide respectful and rare glimpses, some now forbidden, into the resolute and inventive endeavours of ordinary people to return dignity to their families and communities, in the face of complex challenges.

More recent re-occupation of Afghanistan by the Taliban makes these images important memories of people trying to refashion and reimagine its future. During the brief period, 2003 to 2006, Afghanistan worked towards becoming a viable democracy. Steps were taken to protect women’s rights. It was moving away from a tribal militia environment and commenced essential dialogue and interaction between civilian and military actors to promote humanitarian principles.

In January 2022, the Taliban closed down the Ministry of Women’s Affairs. They’ve shut down most girls’ secondary schools and forbidden women to work.

This exhibition needs to be widely seen, touring other parts of Australia – including regional areas where Afghan refugees now live and work.

This review was first published online by The Canberra Times here on 12/9/22 and then in print on page 28 on 26/9/22. It is also available on the author's blog here.

Aftercare, I am that I am, Transcending bodies

Photography Review | Brian Rope

Prue Hazelgrove | I am that I am – a deconstruction 

Emily Portmann | Aftercare

Xi Li, Meng-Yu Yan and Joseph Blair | Transcending bodies

Photo Access | 11 August to 10 September 2022

Across the three gallery spaces, these exhibitions come together to de-construct traditional ideas of identity and interrogate ideologies of self that exist within society. Each exhibition employs distinct methods in exploring societal definitions of self, suffering, and gender nonconformity.

Bringing tintype and collage processes into conversation, Prue Hazelgrove’s I am that I am – a deconstruction examines histories of queer visibility and erasure. The artist says she “is attempting to transform harm into healing through representation and reclamation.” 

Hazelgrove achieves her goals most successfully with her excellent well-constructed paper, photo and text collages. Close reading of each piece of text clipped from a Christian self-help book clearly reveals the story of each particular artwork. The act of having cut up the texts for use in the collages can be seen as having removed any sense of authority they may have had in the source book. Their use also brings vividly to mind the dreadful selective use of scriptural texts by those who have sought, and still do seek, to make people conform to their views of what is right or wrong.

 

Prue Hazelgrove, Too much Skin- I am that I am, 2022, paper, photo and text collage

Prue Hazelgrove, According to Gods design- I am that I am, 2022, paper, photo and text collage

A number of high-quality tintypes complement the collages, revealing with raw honesty the people portrayed. Using the tintype medium fits with its long-standing use for documentation and adds to the artist’s intention of reclaiming her right to “exist as I am”.

 

Prue Hazelgrove, Just a couple of good buds – I am that I am, 2022, Tintype

The catalogue for Hazelgrove’s exhibition also features a piece of fine writing by Emma Batchelor, a queer writer, award-winning author and dancer from Canberra. This piece, Ultra Visible, should be read intently.

In Aftercare, the artist, Emily Portmann, presents a video of her performance as she encases her head in a large pink roll of bubble wrap. Using a sheet of the same pink bubble wrap as the backdrop in the gallery for the video screen is a nice touch. The video is accompanied by a series of self-portraits taken during the performance, each exploring the emotional and psychological ideology behind self-care and wellbeing. In each of them her head has become a large pink cylinder. Hands explore this mysterious object, searching for something unknown to us. The catalogue suggests we are viewing an emerging parody of “a society in which fetishised notions of self-comfort, protection and healing coincide with the commercialisation of wellbeing.”

 

Emily Portmann, Aftercare, Action 7, 2021 , archival pigment print

Then there is a group exhibition by Xi Li, Meng-Yu Yan and Joseph Blair.  Transcending Bodies employs video, 3D animation, AI and printed photo-media to challenge normative ideas of identity and envision new forms of living in the virtual realm.

This exhibition explores how sense-of-self and social dynamics are shaped in virtual environments and brings into focus the possibilities and limits of existing online, untethered from our physical bodies. The catalogue speaks of the existence of hybrids of machine and organism being reality, drawing attention to the fact that many of us now have technological items implanted in our bodies functioning to keep us in better health – or even alive.

There also is a catalogue reference to the way so many of us use social media video games, phone Apps and other technological things on a daily basis, thus moving our physical selves into the virtual realm.

In his series Postcards from Hyrule, Meng-Yu Yan has taken the role of photographer within a virtual space. We see screenshots of this virtual world in a Game played during COVID-19 lockdown. They present as illusory or ghost-like landscapes, with an apparition here and a luminous nebula there. They are printed on a metallic gloss paper as postcards, suggesting they are souvenirs acquired from another planet. Each artwork is a worthy inclusion in the show.

 

Meng-Yu Yan, Postcards from Hyrule 5, 2021, inkjet print on Ilford Metallic gloss

Joseph Blair contributes two diptych works from a series The Tongue of Missing Lovers. Each comprises a photographic portrait accompanied by words about the subject and expressing a feeling about that person. They have an emotional impact if we allow it.

 

Joseph Blair, A Much Larger Tip (From series The Tongue of Missing Lovers), 2022,
inkjet prints, diptych

The third artist in the group is the interdisciplinary Xi Li. Here we see 8.5 minutes of  video, Brain Island: Hyperreal City. It is important to take a seat because the strong probability is that you will want to view it more than once. This is as fine a video artwork as I have seen. It draws you in, uncertain as to what you might come next. So much is happening all through this work that during each viewing you will observe something new.

Xi Li, Brain Island Hyperreal City, 2019, video still

 

Li has woven so many aspects of her own identity into this remarkable piece. She has inserted herself into the work utilising green screen compositing – a process of layering two images or video streams into one another. We see her various alter-egos and contradictory cultures, reflecting her lived experience under both Chinese and Western political systems.

These three exhibitions and their catalogues are each well worth visiting and spending time with.

This review was first published on page 18 of The Canberra Times of 5.9.22 and online here. It is also on the author's blog here.

ADORNED

PHOTOGRAPHY, VIDEO, WEARABLE ART, SCULPTURE | BRIAN ROPE

ADORNED | ADORNED COLLECTIVE

TUGGERANONG ARTS CENTRE | UNTIL 10 SEPTEMBER 2022

This exhibition is a survey of the Adorned Collective’s creative journey over the past seven years. It features photographic and video work, plus wearable artworks and sculptural installations.

The Collective was formed in 2015 as a participant-driven initiative to support artists, artisans, makers and craftspeople of all ages and abilities from culturally diverse backgrounds and experiences, by providing a friendly, culturally safe and accessible creative space. The community that was established participates fortnightly in supported drop-in skill-sharing workshops and public programs. The Collective meets and works on Dharug Country, Western Sydney, and is based at Parramatta Artist Studios in Rydalmere. 

Within the workshops, participants collaborate and share creative processes, stories and skills in order to professionally develop and to build community capacity. The group nurtures friendships and celebrates life, culture, diversity and difference whilst creating inclusive social and professional networks and opportunities for local creatives.

During the seven years since 2015, the Collective has developed and exhibited solo and collaborative works. The Adorned artists have utilized each exhibition and project as a way of engaging community through public programs and creative workshops.

So, what is in this extensive exhibition? There are numerous handmade wearable artworks on display. They include wonderful and intricate masks and hatbands. Then there are woven baskets, and sculptures using various materials such as second-hand paper, wire, twigs and sequins. There are letters from a letter exchange project that connected artists living in regional Queensland. And more.

Farzana Hekmat_Freedom Girl_2020 - wearable art

Ginette Morato_Starry Night_2020 - wearable art

How does photography and video come into this? Well, the artists have been photographed and videoed wearing their own artworks. The photographs in the exhibition are large portraits from 2015. They are all colourful and well-photographed. Each image reveals a considerable amount about its subject. Firstly, we learn about their cultural connections and identities. However, if we take the time to study the works more closely and to think about the details that each reveal, we might begin to understand something of what motivated them when deciding to create the artwork being worn. We might say they embody the souls of each artist.

Hilin Kazemi, 2015. In collaboration with Liam Benson. Photo Jasmine Robertson

Kiri Morcombe, 2015 in collaboration with Liam Benson. Photo Jasmine Robertson

There are two video installations, each quite different from the other. The creative directors of Adorned Wisdom, Memory and Song, 2017, show us the excellent outcomes from a period when guest dance and performance teachers engaged ten of the artists and their drop-in visitors with performance and script development as a means of weaving their stories together and bringing their wearables to life.

The resulting high quality two panel video created from camera footage and sound recordings is most engaging. Diverse music styles, movement, voices, stories and more hold the viewer’s attention as each segment reveals something different and new. The musical score adds the skills of yet another artist to the collaboration. The Do you remember me? Segment tells a wonderful story. Another part, about domestic violence – is simultaneously simple and powerful. And the concluding piece where our eyes watch numerous eyes watching us is delightful.

Susan Ling Young, Wisdom Memory and Song (production still) 2017

In another part of the gallery the second video installation Incognito, Adorned, 2010 is very different. It features footage captured by the artists themselves. They have put on their wearable masks and performed for their cameras, revealing small moments – tender, humorous and, most importantly, empowering of themselves. I particularly enjoyed one artist playfully interacting with a pink blossom tree whilst wearing her “matching” mask and dress.

Lesley-Anne - still from Incognito, Adorned Incognito, 2020

Marina - still from Incognito, Adorned Incognito, 2020

Marina 2 - still from Incognito, Adorned Incognito, 2020

Indeed, empowering is the word for this entire exhibition. Working together in the Collective and with the numerous guest artists brought into the projects undoubtedly has professionally developed each and every participant – and enhanced the creative community of Western Sydney.

This review was published on page 10 of Panorama in The Canberra Times of 13.08.22. It was published on the Canberra Times website here on 14.08.22. It is also available on the author's blog here.

Sky Eternal by Cat Wilson, Up in the Air by Claire Grant, Wild Blue Yonder by Photo Access members

Photography | Brian Rope

Sky Eternal | Cat Wilson

Up in the Air | Claire Grant

Photo Access | 30 June – 30 July

The artists in these two exhibitions have used sky space to explore our human condition. They invite us to reflect on the importance of the surface of our planet and the sky space above - and the care needed to keep everything in good condition.

Blue moon. Blue Monday. Blue blood. Is blue hardwired into our psyche? Did it contribute to our evolutionary development - as hunter-gatherers who learnt to survive among blue skies and oceans? It is the major colour of the works in these shows. Most appropriately, an accompanying Photo Access members’ exhibition has the theme “Wild Blue Yonder.”

 

Trevor Lund, Exploring Scoresby Sound, 2022

From the “Wild Blue Yonder” members’ exhibition

Across the ages, blue has been used when visualising something from our imagination, out of reach or the divine. As a pigment, blue is extremely rare in nature, despite being found in the environment around us – from the tranquil light blue of a sky to the melancholy deep blue of an ocean. Unlike particular reds, browns and yellows, blue pigment cannot be created from materials within our easy grasp. Arguably, blue represents an entirely new world beyond our own.

Sky Eternal by Cat Wilson is an immersive video installation, which mirrors moving cloudscapes. The immediate reaction on entering the room regardless of the point the video has reached is that one is looking at a Rorschach inkblot. I wonder what Leonardo da Vinci and Sandro Botticelli would make of this slowly changing inkblot. Accompanied by an ambient soundscape, composed by Jamie Saxe, this is a captivating work. The catalogue suggests it “mediates on the ways in which the universal and timeless sky unites us all, a metaphor for innovation, positivity, hope and heaven.” When I joined them, I wanted to ask others viewing it what they saw in the inkblot. As they were transfixed, I couldn’t interrupt.

Cat Wilson - Eternal Sky, 2021 - video still

Up in the Air by Claire Grant includes three things. Firstly, there is a 90 x 400 cm composite of 57 A4-sized cyanotypes each printed on fragile paper ephemera that the artist collected during employment as a flight attendant. The papers originally were crew briefings providing details of routes she would be flying, so amongst the imagery she has created there is text and lines and also creases and marks - as she folded the paper to fit in her pocket during each trip.

The images are aerial vignettes framed by Grant’s 'office' windows, the plane's portholes. They are, truly, landscapes. As the aircraft flew over an outback mine, we can see that open cut mine’s landscape in regional Queensland laid out below us. Some of the cyanotypes are essentially white images of the clouds below the plane. Others reveal different aspects of the atmosphere. We are looking at skies filled with navigational charts to and from different destinations around Australia.

It is also worth noting that the artist captured the initial works with a phone camera, making use of its technical limitations to obtain the pixelated and repetitive images that she wanted for her pe-visualised end product. It is quite wonderful.

Claire Grant - Nothing's as precious as a hole in the Ground, 2021-22 (Detail)

Claire Grant - Nothing's as precious as a hole in the ground, 2021-22

On the opposite wall of the gallery is a series of individual artworks, each being cyanotypes and encaustic on washi paper - renowned for strength not fragility. Each image is framed by a porthole. Reflecting the recent period of air travel disruptions, many show terminal boards indicating numerous cancelled flights.

Claire Grant - CANCELLED(CBROvernight), 2022

Claire Grant - Up In The Air (Installation Photo 9)

On the end wall of the “aircraft’s corridor” is one further work - a large cyanotype portrayal of Employee 152578’s pre-employment dental record adding a final piece to this clever interpretation of Grant’s previous career. The whole exhibition opens up a shutdown world.

Claire Grant, Dental Record (Employee 152578), 2022 (Installation Photo)

This review was first published on page 10 of the Panorama supplement in The Canberra Times of 9 July 2022 and online here. It is also available on the author's blog here.

Where Lakes Once Had Water

Audio-visual Art | Brian Rope

Where Lakes Once Had Water | Sonia Leber and David Chesworth

Drill Hall Gallery | Until 10 April 2022 

Where Lakes once Had Water (2020) is a video that runs for 28:14 minutes. Whether gallery visitors see it from start to finish depends on whether they manage to arrive as it commences to play. I arrived around 7 minutes into it, so stayed to see the missed opening scenes after viewing all the rest of the video.

In 2018 and 2019, Melbourne/Naarm-based artists Sonia Leber and David Chesworth travelled with a team of Earth and environmental scientists investigating changes in climate, landscape and ecology in the Northern Territory over millennia. Their resultant video channels this experience, in which Indigenous rangers, Elders and community members collaborate with scientists in spectacular yet challenging environments.

Leber and Chesworth are known for their distinctive video, sound and architecture-based installations that are audible as much as visible. Their works are speculative and archaeological, often involving communities and elaborated from research in places undergoing social, technological or local geological transformation. The works emerge from reality but exist significantly in the realm of the imaginary, hinting at unseen forces and non-human perspectives.

Presented across two screens, this immersive long-form video is a journey encompassing audio-visual realms, scientific endeavour and traditional Indigenous knowledge, stories and custodianship – an amalgamation of efforts to understand this ancient land.

Where Lakes Once Had Water was filmed on the lands and waters of the Mudburra, Marlinja, Jingili, Elliot, Jawoyn and Larrakia communities, with additional filming and editing on Barkindji, Dharawal, Djabugay, Yidinji and Wurundjeri Country. In partnership with Bundanon, it is the first of four art commissions by The Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Biodiversity and Heritage (CABAH), which works across disciplinary boundaries, and seeks to garner broad perspectives of the past in order to engage new audiences with the story of ‘epic Australia.’ The aim is to engage artists with aspects of research - to make new work that responds to, questions, and interprets the research for broader audiences.

From fieldwork in deserts to microscopic work in laboratories, scientists sought evidence of Earth's forces over long-term cycles of wet and dry. Many of those forces – wind, temperature, long-term aridification and tectonic movement – were invisible to the human eye or lay beyond human timescales.

Sonia_Leber_David_Chesworth_Where_Lakes_Once_Had_Water_video still 01b

Leber and Chesworth say their project “tests the hypothesis that the Earth is experienced and understood through different but interconnected ontologies. These ways of being, seeing, sensing, listening and thinking can align with art, Indigenous thought, science, ancient and modern cultures, the non-human, and somewhere in between.”

The video introduces Ray Dimakarri Dixon calling to ancestral spirits to watch over Country as scientists excavate the red earth of once-submerged lake beds. The fieldwork is observed by non-human cohabitants, as ecologies of birds, termites, flies and vegetation continue their own struggles of survival. Across the ancient shorelines, everyone is receptive to the signs, signals and rhythms of the land and water.

Sonia_Leber_David_Chesworth_Where_Lakes_Once_Had_Water_video still 07, with Ray Dimakarri Dixon

There are few spoken words – essentially only Auntie Susan Kingston, appropriately using Indigenous language. There are, however, numerous other sounds employed. Was that a created xylophone I saw and heard? Were sounds recorded by microphones and other recording devices scanning termite hills part of the soundtrack I listened to?

Sonia_Leber_David_Chesworth_Where_Lakes_Once_Had_Water_video still 08, with Auntie Susan Kingston and Aara Welz

There is so much to see in this video. Dry landscapes, grains, gorges and ants. Core samples, bottled water, laboratories, measurements, analysis. Geological explorations, erosion, dirt roads, fishing. Cattle, a road freight train. I could go on and on.

Sonia_Leber_David_Chesworth_Where_Lakes_Once_Had_Water_video still 02

Sonia_Leber_David_Chesworth_Where_Lakes_Once_Had_Water_video still 03b

 

Sonia_Leber_David_Chesworth_Where_Lakes_Once_Had_Water_video still 04b, detail

It is wonderful to see art used to educate artists and art lovers about biodiversity and heritage research and, hopefully, gain at least a little more understanding of these places where lakes once had water.

This review was published on page 37 of The Canberra Times of 7/3/22 here. It is also available on the author's blog here.