No Part is Immune From the Changes of its Counterparts
Searching for Wonderland Catalogue Essay, 2012
by Antoanetta Ivanova, Curator - Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei (MOCA)
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In the Australian Aborigines Dreamtime there is a common mythological story about a serpent of enormous proportions with powers so great that it can replenish the creeks and rivers of the land. As it slithers across Country, the Rainbow Serpent[1]forms deep channels and gullies, collecting and distributing water, creating not just the rivers and mountains of the landscape but the flow of life itself. But if disturbed, this giant can be unforgiving, causing irreversible destruction.
Today, across the continent, its powers are felt most palpably in areas threatened by the impacts of climate change. In A Living Body, Josephine Starrs and Leon Cmielewski focus on the increasing extremes of weather- induced disasters across the region. Drawing upon the wisdom of the ancient Aboriginal culture, the artists have embedded words from the Ngarringjerri tradition into the dry coastal ground of the Coorong as if to warn us: this land is a living body.
Martin Walch has lived all his life in Tasmania and for many years has explored every region of the island. In Mist Opportunities, he invites us to not only contemplate the wilderness15 but also to reflect upon how the land has been eroded by ongoing development that has irrevocably altered its natural ecology. Here is a drowned, grey post-apocalyptic world.
Continuing this theme Jasmine Targett contemplates the magnificent evening sky set ablaze in vivid multi-colours not as a romantic sunset but an atmosphere filled with toxic gases. Atmosphere: and your troubles, like bubbles, will disappear examines the state of the Earth’s ecosystems as if they were bubbles on the verge of collapsing. It challenges us to imagine a new nation self, proactively engaged in a global responsibility towards the ecological balance of the Planet.
2012
[1] Broadly adopted name
