We wish to pay our respects to the traditional owners and custodians of the lands and waters on which we operate, the Ngunawal, Ngunnawal and Ngambri peoples. We acknowledge that sovereignty was never ceded and this land always has been and always will be Aboriginal land.

3rd-20th Feb

BEING HERE

Programs Organiser: Zora Pang

Exhibition Organiser: Sophia Childs

Install Team: Sophia Childs, Sarah Murray and Isabelle Sheppard and special thanks for artists who installed their own work

Organisation Assistance: Faith Stellmaker and Isabelle Sheppard

Elliot Bastianon, Samantha Corbett, Anthony Hodgkinson, Emma Rani Hodges, Toni Hassan, Andrew Jaffray, Sarah Murray, Aaron Sun, Brigitta Summers, Annie Parnell, Angela Schilling, Lara Tilbrook and Thomas Thorby-Lister

Happening on the Ngunnawal, Ngunawal and Ngambri Country, Being Here is a series of creative works and actions gathered in response to Belconnen Arts Centre’s territory-wide Aquifer program. Creatives have an incredible capacity to provoke meaningful dialogue around the issues of climate change. Being Here serves to create a space for creatives in our community to address this topic through considerations of what it means to love and care for the land we live on, the resistance of weeds, how mineral growth can reveal the power imbalance between human activity and environmental forces, and engagements with sound/site/geography/politics and more. Tributary Projects’ Being Here aims to be a space inclusive of diverse and personal responses to the land we all share, through intimate and personal encounters we aim to provoke consideration about how we can care for our lands, waters and airs for a shared future.

EVENTS ON

OPENING NIGHT - exhibition opened by an improvisational performance responding to environment

[FREE ENTRY WITH GOLDEN COIN DONATION]

by Shiara Astle & Elissa Jackson (@publiccollaboration)

10TH FEB 6-8PM

“Our performances are improvisation where we feel and sense connections to the site and each other at the time of the event to generate responsive music and movement. For Aquifer, the music is a description or a depiction of weather phenomena, air and breath, and fluctuations between a drama of contrasts. Composition and performance techniques create oscillating tensions alluding to submersion, and environmental violence. 

The movement is an exploration of identity and Fonua (country\land). Drawing inspiration from various techniques, the soundscape, the country, Ngunawal\Ngunnawal\Ngambri and an internal dialogue considering a deep connection to mother culture and vai (water).

The performance will interact with and occur throughout the space, This particular performance is a reflection upon the fact that Oceania is drowning.”

—— Shiara and Elissa

Caring for Trees - Virtual Workshop [click to book]

Think with trees through art, with Brigitta Summers (@ brigittasummers)

Sat 19th Feb 2022, 11:00 am - 1:00 pm AEDT

Brigitta Summers (She/Her)

Untitled #1 (Bleeding Heart). (2022). Woodcut (unique state). 117cm x 88cm.

$900

In the context of the Anthropocene, my practice aims to reconsider the relationship between plants and humans. Acknowledging our fundamental reliance on plants for our continued life, my work attempts to bring us into dialogue with trees while recognising the inevitable slippage between human and plant. Through the medium of woodcut, the tree becomes present, both materially and visually. Nevertheless, the relationship remains one of non-innocence.

Sarah Murray (She/Her)

Aftermath. (2020). Acrylic on Canvas. Approx 189 x 150 cm.

Tree Stump. (2020). Charcoal on Paper. 238 x 168 cm.

Price on application

My work Aftermath was a response to the multitude of imagery from the devastating bushfires at the start of 2020 and my experience of reacting to media and family communication whilst living overseas. The work is an amalgamation of this imagery, creating a slumped, heaving form of wreckage of what once was.

The work Tree Stump was created en plein air, by taking the individual sheets of paper out into the landscape, laying them on the ground and working on them. The landscape informed the drawing, the uneven ground affecting the marks, the changing light shifting the form and the aerial perspective in which it was drawn distorting the image. It was a practice in being present in the environment that I was in, and experiencing a connection to the place.

Thomas Thorby-Lister (He/Him)

Untitled (Burning Border). (2022). Acrylic on Linen. 112 x 76cm.

$2716

This painting focuses on an area of National Park that borders the ACT and NSW, the Namadgi National Park, belonging to the Nyamudy/Namadgi people.

Using government data, 3D models and generative mapping to research the topography of the region I’ve painted this aerial landscape to highlight the ecological disaster that occurred here in the Black Summer fires of 2020. The raw linen and monotone palette evoke the exposed burnt landscape seen in satellite images and aerial photographs of the region after the fires. A thin white line maps the border between the ACT and NSW. The Namadgi National Park occupies approximately 46% of the total land area of the ACT. This region is a critical ecology listed on the Australian National Heritage List. The fire burned 82,700 ha of Namadgi National Park (about 80 per cent of the total park area), making it one of the biggest ecological disasters in ACT’s history. Almost half of the ACT was destroyed by fires during this climate disaster. The fire was accidentally ignited by a military helicopter.

I hope this work brings a focus to the importance of our natural landscape and the impact it faces due to critical changes to the world’s climate.

Samantha Corbett (She/Her)

Keep Me Warm. (2022). Acrylic on canvas. 60cm x 60cm.

$450

‘Keep Me Warm’ reflects on trends of global warming and its relationship with our built environments by exploring geographic data on urban heat effects in Australia.

Urban heat islands occur when cities replace natural land cover with dense concentrations of pavements, buildings and surfaces that absorb heat. This can lead to increases in heat related illnesses, energy costs and air pollution. Recent studies in Australia have also described a ‘heat gap’ whereby rising effects are occurring in dense, lower socio-economic city suburbs compared to wealthier suburbs. This will likely increase with the impacts of global warming.

The work seeks to creates a liminal space between the known of built structures and abstract data, questioning our relationships with modern comforts of the urban in an increasingly changing climate.

Aaron Sun (He/Him)

Stagnation. (2021). Video, 13:51:00.

not for sale

'Stagnation' is my new exploration video installation. I used several footage documentaries and stop motion. In 'Stagnation' I link a new Chinese social concept 'neijuan' as the basis, (The Chinese term 'neijuan' is composed of the words internal and rolling, implying a process of inward curling, trapping participants into the unending self-circulation) to explore the relationship between 'neijuan' and utopia. We are developing rapidly and creating an ’great‘ utopia. But such rapid development has put us in a vicious circle, which is actually a kind of stagnation. Because of our living space, the natural environment is facing an unprecedented crisis. Square and circle symbolize rules and systems in Chinese culture. From these Shaped videos, we can see the control of capital and politics over people, as well as the wind gap between our system and utopia.

Emma Rani Hodges, They/She

‘I’m your unfinished shadow, you’ve gone where I can’t go, and I know the sunbeams must miss you.’ (2021). Fabric from my grandmother in Thailand, fabric from op shops, glitter, pva glue, plastic pearls, plastic rhinestones, sewing pins, acrylic paint, spray paint and bamboo. 2.5. x 1.1m.

$2000

‘I’m your unfinished shadow, you’ve gone where I can’t go, and I know the sunbeams must miss you’ focuses on diasporic identity and building connection to waterways on colonised land.

My mum was born in a province in Thailand that sits beside the Mekong River which houses a creature called the Naga. This serpent is believed to be a caretaker for the river while at the same time being diasporic to the earthly realm. It was born in the underworld and some believe it to be a monster, able to stir catastrophe. The river my mum was born beside knows death and it knows war. It’s known hundreds of bodies pulled from it’s muddy shores and the Naga knows these things too. Rivers give life and human intervention can take that life. During these unprecedented times I’ve been stuck in so-called ‘Australia’ like so many of us have. My love for this land deepened and I found solace beside the rivers, creeks and lakes. I wanted to create an artwork which could honor these spaces. So often I found them littered with garbage, mud stirred up by introduced fish and chemical run off leaving a shimmer on the surface. I wondered how the Naga would feel if it had been born here with me. My grandma got a Naga tattooed on my left shoulder to protect me, it swims when I do and together we imagine swimming ‘home’. We imagine healthy wetlands and the call of frogs, we imagine ankle deep sphagnum moss filtering water until it runs clear, we imagine the original custodians of this land being given the right to care for land and water as it should be cared for, we imagine reed warblers singing and we imagine what it could feel like to be alive on a planet that we’ve decided to nurture.

Andrew Jaffray, (He/Him).

"Lake Cargelligo Environs". (2021). Acrylic on paper. 80cm X 99cm

$1200

My work was inspired by a trip to Lake Cargelligo in the Central West of New South Wales.

The township of Lake Cargelligo fronts a controlled lake which is fed from the Lachlan River. It is a relatively unique area with an abundance of birdlife particularly during the good rains of the last two years.

The images in my works serve to highlight the influence of the major river systems in this country which underpin human settlements and agriculture.

Elliot Bastianon, (He/Him).

Patterns, 2021, copper sulphate, copper, plywood, 100 x 100 x 16cms.

$5500

‘Patterns’ is a wall-mounted sculpture comprised of 16 modules which have been encrusted with a bright blue copper sulphate growth. The modules are arranged in a simple grid pattern. The combination of module and organic growth speaks of systems of self-production and expansion in a way that does not rely on choices made by the individual. The work makes allusions to chemical changes that are initiated by people, but have the potential to take off and drastically alter an environment.

Toni Hassan, (She/Her).

Refuge 1, 2021 (from Shelter series). Acrylic on recycled curtain, eyelets, rope and rocks. 130 x 210 cm (with dimensions variable as an installation)

$1400

Into the blue, 2021 (from Shelter series). Acrylic on recycled curtain, eyelets, rope and rocks.167 x 226 cm (with dimensions variable as an installation)

$1400

Seared. Installation with second hand metal table, adapted with charred logs from the fire-affected NSW South Coast, and sheets of printed text from "Conversation Pieces", 2021. Dimensions: 95 (h) x 53 x 85 (variable)

not for sale

These works come out of a dialogical art project called Conversation Pieces: Remembering Black Summer.

I spoke with women in the capital region about the impacts of Australia’s 2019-20 Black Summer and Canberra hailstorm on their bodies and breath. How did it change the view of their future? How do they continue to foster hope?

The interview transcripts became a book with images.

The conversations were a way for me and participants to process our own environmental grief in the wake of that visceral summer.

The stories informed a number of multimedia responses from photographs, installations with text, a public performance, videos and expanded paintings (two of which are shown here).

These expanded paintings use found material to suggest makeshift shelters, objects with a practical edge to reflect the transitory and upending nature of adverse climate events - events which are displacing millions of people across the globe each year.

Annie Parnell, (She/They).

53 instances of plant noticing, 2021. paper collage of plant noticings, 495cm (w) x 215cm (h).

Invitation to Notice (Weed Meditation Exercise), 2021. noticing exercise, collaborative collage, dimensions variable.

not for sale

A weed is a plant out of place.

In so-called Australia, weeds are seen as pests, threats and disruptors of native wildlife, tidy gardens and agricultural productivity. However, if we can learn to encounter weeds, to observe them for what they truly are, there are things we can learn from them.

Weeds are tough, they adapt to and thrive in depleted soils, returning nutrients to them. Some weeds are nutritious. Others have healing properties. Weeds also tell stories of colonisation and settler land mismanagement.

By practicing ways of noticing and encountering weeds, we can start to learn from them. Weeds emerge from spaces of ruin, and they offer us strategies of survival and resilience in this time of increasing climate crisis.

Think like a weed.

notice vegetal resistance. Noticing that which emerges in spaces of ruin is pertinent in a

time of destruction.

___________

Invitation to Notice is an ongoing participatory art project on Ngunawal, Ngunnawal + Ngambri Country exploring ways of encountering, learning from and building vegetal resistance.

Angela Schilling, (She/Her).

her place. 2022. Video and audio. Running time (total for audio and video): 17 minutes 53 seconds

not for sale

'her distance, her name' is an ongoing work which locates space and land with memory, identity, loss and language. As we grow, language and place connect themselves - places remind us of people and sounds, sound and voices remind us of places, especially those which hold our identity. The images and soundscapes in 'her distance, her name' are sounds and images of familiarity and calling to place through language. Many emigrants are lucky enough to be able to connect with their homelands, some are not. Those that are can only connect themselves as best they can. Schilling's connection with her mother (and self) are broken through distance and time, and her mother's (and her own) connection with her homeland are broken through distance and time. The juxtaposition of concurrent sounds and images - some familiar, some not, and changing with pace due to climate change - lead us to confusion and indecision, just as one may be divided into parts as their identities are shared between different places and languages.

Lara Tilbrook, (She/Her).

Duty of Care by Lara Tilbrook. (2020). Hessian, pelt, quill, cotton, wool and bone.

TBA direct artist contact

‘Duty of Care’ is an evolving body of work embedded with nostalgic sentiment of colonial treasures. Intricately crafted organic objects fashioned from natural, found and recycled materials heighten and acknowledge the worth of our fragile ecological. Lara Tilbrook explores cultural values with a focus on environmental preservation. Her creative practice is intrinsically linked to her conservation practices on Karta/Kangaroo Island.

Anthony Hodgkinson, (He/Him).

Dancers In the wind III 2019 Silver gelatin handprint on fibre-based paper F. 296 x 220mm | Edition 1 of 3 + 1AP

$800

This piece is developed with a symbiotic relationship shared with the documented landscape. The photographic negatives of Dancers In the Wind III were developed with collected organic matter from the terrain. The landscape engraves an impression onto the photographic surface through this interaction, and this technique ensures that the marks of the landscape remain present.

I acknowledge and pay respect to the Kur-ing Gai nation, the traditional custodians of the land on which this work was created.