spoken word/poetry/performance for Healing Ground at St Johns Park, New Town, Tasmania

I have lived in the midst of Lies; in my family, the Anglican Church, and as a person of British ancestry in a country invaded and occupied by the British government. I am a white, privileged male, conceived of Empire. Australia, as I have experienced it, only exists within a colonial paradigm. The original inhabitants, the Aboriginal nations, have never ceded their Lands. The British remain as occupiers. Colonialism is not just my history; it is my very presence.

I am a ghost among

the gum trees, an

apparition of imagination,

sent here, born here from

those sent, sentenced, given

a new life in a new Land, Diaspora,

the chosen ones, the forgotten,

the despised, excess of an

Empire; Lost.

 

I did not choose to be

here, my fate was sealed on

distant shores, by desperate folk,

living disparate lives, unknown and

uncertainty befell them, no land to

claim, no home to shelter, sent

sailing to the four winds, many

never to see land again,

buried; At sea.

 

the Land I dwell in is

not my own, never was,

never will be, covered with

names so familiar, with buildings

upon Places, hiding Knowledge I will

never fully comprehend, the fate that

befalls me is that I live out a lie

under the premise of a nation

fabricated; Alone.

St Johns Park, New Town, is situated on Crown land, claimed by the British in the early 19th century. Buildings commissioned by Governor Arthur include the Anglican Church and the boys and girls orphanages. The Anglican Church was complicit in the invasion and colonisation of Tasmania, the forceful removal of Aboriginal children from their families, and the Aboriginal nations from their Lands.

Photograph by Amy Brown

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Our Lady of the Gyre rises from the ocean to plead for us to stop the destruction of her oceans. There are five major gyres in oceans around the world. They are natural currents that act like a giant whirlpool drawing water in and then out again in a cyclic fashion. what has happened in recent decades is the amount of plastic entering the oceans has increased exponentially, and the floating mass of plastic is drawn into these gyres, forming gigantic, floating garbage patches. The largest and most well known is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. It weighs around 7 million tons. It is estimated that by 2050 the biomass of the oceans will be equalled by the mass of plastic in the oceans.Plastic thrown in the ocean kills around 1 million sea creatures every year. Around 13 billion plastic bottles are thrown out each year. Every piece of plastic ever made, still exists today.

Our Lady of the Gyre was made from 'ghost nets' found along the isolated south-western coast of Tasmania. These are nets loosed from fishing boats and left in the oceans, not only causing a hazard to marine life, but being synthetic, like plastic, photodegrade, and break down into smaller and smaller pieces, then eventually tiny polymers. These polymers don't break down any further, but instead, absorb many times their weight in petrochemicals found in the oceans. These polluted polymers are then ingested by marine life, where the chemicals then release into their systems causing serious health problems or death. We humans are at the top off this food chain, and polymers and pollutants are already entering our  own systems.

Photograph by Luke Bowden

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Kellys Garden Curated Projects

A performance-based installation around a handcrafted shrine. Referencing the iconography and ritual of religion the performance and shrine will create a metaphorical and literal platform to connect with the quandaries of contemporary living. The shrine is in no way intended to promote existing religions, but rather to investigate the idea of a carbon-based religion. We are a carbon-based life form and the consequence of our existence, in any manner, produces carbon dioxide that contributes to global warming. Rather than trying to neutralise our carbon footprint, this work acknowledges our footprint and responds, by gesture, in a manner that attests to our humanity.

We are in a state. A state of being like never before. The Anthropocene. The geological age where humankind is the most significant agent of change. Change on a global scale. We have taken from the earth that which cannot be replaced. Not in millions of years. Coal. Oil. Gas. Organic matter laid down upon the earth and buried eons ago. And now all but gone. 1000 barrels of oil per second. Our current global consumption. If only we were consuming at this rate because we had no other choice for survival. But no. We waste. We support inefficiency. The global oil industry is subsidised $10 million every minute. But even when we attain efficiency we squander it needlessly.

Economist William Stanley Jevons in his 1865 book, The Coal Question, predicted that when technological progress increases the efficiency with which a resource is used (thereby reducing the amount necessary for any one use), the rate of consumption of that resource rises because of increasing demand. Technological advancements has made air travel increasingly efficient, and often more efficient than other forms of transport. But we simply fly more and more and more and more and more. For my grandparents, travelling to the other side of the world was a once in a lifetime experience. For many of that generation it simply never happened. The opening of borders around the world and the proliferation of events have us clambering onto flights at any given opportunity. After all it’s so cheap. Isn’t it? This is the dilemma. It’s cheaper for me to fly to Melbourne than it is to take my car across the Spirit of Tasmania. And why would I want to take my car when Melbourne has such a great public transport system? It’s complex.

There are no silver bullets or bullet trains or shiny machines that will save us.

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Bloom is made from over 12,000 plastic lids zip-tied together to form over sixty organic shapes. The pieces were floated together on the Derwent River at the Glenorchy Arts and Sculpture Park (GASP) for the Flotilla project as part of the biennial Glenorchy Works Festival.

The plastic tops used are typically discarded without a thought, end up in landfill, and are rarely recycled. But because they float they also have a great chance of circulating in waterways if discarded inappropriately. Placing these plastic tops in a seemingly precarious position in the natural environment created an uneasy tension provoking conversation and interest about how the way we live and consume impacts on the local environment. Working with the inherent shape and colours of the plastic tops created a bloom effect mimicking the natural environment in which it was placed.

The new GASP boardwalk is situated on the Derwent River, and has given many people a new perspective on the river environment, allowing them to consider what it is that is coming into the river from our built environment. However, the foreshore is not a natural state as such, with much of the original shoreline being reclaimed, and the boardwalk dissecting water and land. So while the plastic tops seem out of place in 'nature', they create a playful interruption between the natural and built environments.

There is a great amount of interest in plastic pollution and particularly the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. However, we can easily overlook that much of the plastic that ends up in the ocean started out in a waterway after being discarded inappropriately within the built environment. Plastic is now a much-maligned material accumulating around us, and although it originates from petrochemicals derived from oiled formed from living matter buried millions of years ago, it does not break down into the environment like scientists once believed it would.

The artwork is fundamentally a re-presentation of post-consumer materials, but it is certainly created with intention and attention to an art-form; it isn’t simply a pile of rubbish tipped into the river. Although the latter could create intense reactions and conversations about consumerism and the environment, it could also be divisive and inaccessible. Creating an aesthetically pleasing and playful artwork, however, can be interesting and accessible, allowing an opportunity to contemplate issues that are in fact deadly serious.

Photograph by Lucia Rossi

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