Let Me take You There: the Great Artesian Basin

2022 Milani Gallery, Brisbane. I Will Take You There: the Great Artesian Basin.

2023 Undercurrents, Penrith Regional Gallery, Let Me Take You There: the Great Artesian Basin.

Collection, Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA).

Showing the aquifer’s contours, water flow, springs; land reserved for mining of gas, coal, petroleum; recharge zones, towns for orientation. Scale: 5000mm X 4140mm Date 2021 Mixed media – primed canvas, water colour, pencil, ink, crayon, acrylic paint.

STATEMENT We only map locations and resources that are of use to us … my long fascination with maps has taken me to the Great Artesian Basin (GAB), a result of my field research in Central Queensland documenting the natural environments in the region of the Adani, ergo Carmichael, ergo Bravus thermal coal mine, which I discovered is located above the GAB. Concerns that this pure underground water will be polluted by coal mining added to my initial concern – carbon emissions and global warming. The GAB is the biggest aquafer in the world, underlying around one fifth of Australia. It is a source of water from the tip of Queensland down to New South Wales, across into the Northern Territory and into South Australia. Our agricultural and livestock industries depend upon it. On the field I discovered Queensland’s central and northern environments are dictated by alternating Dry Seasons when rivers dry up, totally, followed by the Wet Seasons’ massive floods. Coal mining will potentially over-extract water in Dry Seasons and pollute the GAB’s precious water in the Wet Seasons. Yet like myself before this peoject, few people are aware of the Great Artesian Basin. Central to the installation, Let Me Take You There: the Great Artesian Basin is a desire to reveal this unique, hidden natural habitat and its precious water.

We must protect it for the future.

Ref/ Ely.B. Cover image (I Will Take You There: the Great Artesian Basin), Oceania magazine, November, 2023. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ocea.5338

Slip Slap

Performance, Waterhouse, the Cutaway, Bennelong, for Sydney Biennale’s Art After Dark program, re/ plastic pollution.

SLIP SLAP - SET UP at the Cutaway, Barangaroo

The Menindee Fish Kill photograph was on a flat screen behind my performance setup. Lisa Roberts put it through a video program so that it undulates as if live.

Bath with warm water & bubble bath. A stool with 2 hazmat overalls; towel; dressing gown; bowl of shells on a doily; bath mat; chair with cushion.

With my phone in hand playing Bobby Daren’s song, Splish Splash, I dance through the audience to the bath wearing the Menindee Fish Kill paisley patterned dress.

I stepped into the bath & shrunk back in horror as it was filled with disgusting plastic trash from the Cooks River.

Screen Shot 2022-06-23 at 12.28.36 pm.png

Screen Shot 2022-06-23 at 12.29.48 pm.png

Screen Shot 2022-06-23 at 12.34.12 pm.png

Screen Shot 2022-06-23 at 12.36.10 pm.png

I pick up the yucky objects, played around with some and threw them on the floor. Some landed in the audience, I carefully cleaned some bits & put them aside for recycling - eg/ children's toys, a bowl.

When I'd removed most of the objects. I expressed relief (body language) but decided to put on a hazmat overall before getting back into the bath, explaining the water was now polluted with micro plastics.

BUT, the bottom of the bath was filled with sheets of plastic …