JABILUKA UO2, 1979
Performance Festival, Preston Institute of Technology, Bundoora, Victoria, curated by Peter Kennedy & Tom McCullough. Assisted by Charles Green & William Winford. Photographer: Noelene Lucas.
Jabiluka UO2 addresses the proposal to mine uranium on the Mirror people’s country, adjacent to the floodplain at Jabiluka in the Northern Territory’s Kakadu National Park. Following intense national & international campaigns from 1979 initiated by the Mirarr people, the traditional Indigenous owners of Jabiluka, the mine did not go ahead.
The artist creates an earthen form inscribed with an ochre spiral, quoting body-size, conical baskets women weave in Arnhem Land to rest in, for example when they are pregnant, menstruating, also to put their babies in to sleep.
Unknown to her, two men, surveyors, are making a straight white, territorial line across the landscape in the distance.
When the dome is finished, the viewers and the artist realise if the men continue their straight line, they will destroy the dome.
Using spiraling body movements, she tries to communicate the importance of the dome, but the men ignore her.
She blocks their way, describing the dome with body movements.
In desperation she spins, faster and faster, finally spiralling off with uncontrolled vertigo, collapsing to the ground.
The men finish their straight, white line and in the process, stomp over the fragile cone, continuing on just a few metres - they pack up and leave.
The artist, recovered from vertigo, quickly creates a grass spiral over the straight line, joins it, following the straight line, to the cone’s grass fringe. and finally, burns the spiral and the cone’s perimeter into the earth, re-asserting her symbol.
