Dust of these domains

This weather report consists of digital iterations of the components of Dust of these domains. A project that grapples with the instability of thought and materiality at the close of the Holocene, at an embodied, communal, and planetary scale. It investigates ways to develop forms of relationality with non-human life within which human worlds are enmeshed, and deeply indebted.

The report is structured in 4 interrelated parts: 

A walk

The work is framed through a performance-walk that tracks a circuit around the grounds at Bundanon – on lands of the Dharawal and Dhurga language groups – from the lowest reaches of the Shoalhaven River to the highest accessible elevation in the Spotted Gum Forest behind the museum. The walk pauses at 4 locations, while text-fragments written specifically for the occasion are performed: 

1. Registering: Inside the museum's Laboratorium.
2. Submerging: At the Jetty on the Shoalhaven River.
3. Surfacing: At the top of the Budawang track, in the Spotted Gum Forest.
4. Airborn: On the museum's roof, overlooking the canopy of the Eucalyptus Botryoides forest in the west.

Texts

The texts consider the geologic residues of past environments that persist in the present, traces of extinction and regeneration that are registered in the geologic record, and the interdependence of colonial inheritance and extractive relations within the current climate crisis through embodied experiences within the Illawarra and Shoalhaven regions.

Download the text here

Images

The images document bronze objects hand-moulded from wax that was worked into the crevices of silicone surfaces which were themselves pressed upon the fragments of fossils selected from the following sources: 

1) Plant fossils from the Permian and Triassic epochs held in the paleo-botanical archives of the Australia museum; 

2) My backyard in Wollongong, which sits on Permian epoch ground;  

3) Surfaces rocks from the cliffs that register the Permian-Triassic boundary and the fourth mass extinction event on Earth;  

4) Contemporary anthropogenic surfaces at Bundanon as well as surfaces of living botanical forms found in the plant community of the Spotted gum Forest on the hill in the upper reaches of the Bundanon property. 

These bronze objects are carried throughout the duration of the event, by the walking-participants.

Video

The video is composed of rubbings made from a series of surfaces ranging from the geologic to the botanical, spanning a vast sequence of timescales. Some are made from currently living formations, while others document life-forms long extinct, but which gave rise to geologic formations while remaining registered within them, such as Glossopteris leaves of Permian era forests of Gondwanaland.

Bianca Hester

Bianca Hester is an artist living and working on unceded Dharawal land. Her work investigates the material conditions and geo-social histories of contested sites and extractive zones across Australia. Through a combination of fieldwork, archival research and writing, sculptural production and performed actions, she produces multilayered projects that unpack the diverse sedimentations of specific locations which shape their present condition. This generates an expansive form of public art unfolding in dialogue with a range of interlocutors and participants. She is a Sidney Myer fellow (2016), a member of the Open Spatial Workshop (2003-ongoing) and a Senior Lecturer and Co-Director of Research and Engagement in the School of Art and Design at UNSW, Sydney. Her work Reading Walking Lithic Bodies (2022) was presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art in conjunction with the launch of her recent book Groundwork (2021), published through Perimeter Editions.

www.biancahester.com & www.osw.com.au

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Bundanon’s annual presentation of environmental research projects and public programs has a decade-long history.  In 2022, Siteworks is presenting a family of projects that draw on climate research, critical thinking through contemporary art, creative digital spaces, and Indigenous knowledge and technologies.

The starting point for Siteworks 2022 is the concept of the weather report, borrowed to map both environmental and emotional spaces, and chronicle internal and external landscapes. This expansive program includes a new exhibition, outdoor installations, a laboratorium space for workshops and performances, as well as talks and events over weekends throughout the season. Siteworks 2022 posits the artist as a kind of weather balloon, capturing a collection of reports on our place and our time.

Commissioned by Bundanon; part of the weather station in Bundanon, NSW, Australia - find out more here.