Sight, Cite, Site
2016 ‘Ku-ring-gai pH Art + Science Program’
Exhibited in Manly Gallery, Sydney, 2017.
Collaboration: scientist, Dr Karen Privat and artist, Bonita Ely.
The installation, Sight, Cite, Site.
Mediums: collaged wallpaper; capes, printed cloth; tent, fabric, plastic rods, dried mud, doona, Ku-ring-gai Chase bird & insect sounds, book; plastic rubbish.
THE WALLPAPER - composed of fractals, including microscopic samples, researched in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park (KCNP) by scientist, Dr Karen Privat and artist, Bonita Ely.
Details of the collaged wallpaper:
CAPES Designed and made by Dr Karen Privat to snuggle up in are hanging on the wall.
The 3 capes’ designs are composed of patterned microscopic imagery: Cape #1 - Plants eg/ acacia seed, pollen, shell; Cape #2 - Invertibrates eg/ tick, mosquito, cockroach; Cape #3 - Inorganic material eg/ sand, salt.
Below: examples of the microscopic imagery: Flower bud; wood duck’s eggshell : .
Sign to invite people to wear the capes while viewing the installation.
TENT - coated in red ochre soil, the Tent is a place of rest. Inside there’s a book of Bonita Ely’s drawings of Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park and Karen Privat’s Cape patterns made from micrographs of specimens collected in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park.
The sounds of Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park’s wildlife play in the Tent.
Beside the tent on the floor is a scattering of plastic rubbish …
Inside the tent - a place to rest, listen to the birds and insect sounds, play and explore.
PLASTIC RUBBISH SWEPT UP AGAINST THE WALLPAPER
Detail - plastic pollution swept up against the pristine imagery of Ku-ring-Gai National Park.
CATALOGUE ENTRY
Sight Cite Site, is an immersive installation that combines the pure and the abject in a reflection upon our love of pristine nature: how it delights, nurtures, calms and protects us however distanced we may live in Sydney’s urban environments.
This artwork is inspired by Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park: research of repeated patterns – fractals – that interconnect all terrestrial, aquatic and geological phenomena in a matrix of ecological interdependence. Using microscopy, that is, electronic magnification that reveals nature’s hidden surfaces, its tactility and structures, combined with photographs of complimentary examples. We ‘crawled all over’ this iconic coastal landscape.
From a global perspective, Australia is surrounded by the planet’s trans-ecology, water. The spectre of our irreversible pollution - not by industry, not by wars or nasty agricultural nutrients – hovers over our thoughtless, everyday littering of water. Ocean food chains are polluted by invisible, toxic microplastics, microbeads, plastic junk, killing species, haunting our reflective moments. Where does this pollution come from that may be as big a threat as global warming to the planet’s ecosystems?
A plastic bag floats by on the breeze. Friends stub out cigarette butts, flicking them into the gutter. A useless plastic bauble – oops, it fell onto the street. Litter – thoughtless, everyday litter - we must turn this around.
Bonita Ely’s socio-political art practice in collaboration with Karen Privat’s fascination with the microscopic world has produced this multilayered examination of an invisible but deadly threat to natural environments, exemplified by our beautiful Kur-ing-gai Chase National Park.