good grief

This body of work taps into the emerging topic of environmental grief. In the wake of Australia’s visceral Black Summer, I asked myself ‘How can I make visual art that bears witness, and engages my grief in ways that could be cathartic?’

The research fed a dialogic project: Conversation Pieces: Remembering Australia’s Black Summer.

I spoke with women in the capital region about the impacts of Black Summer and the Canberra hailstorm on their bodies and breath. The interview transcripts became a book, now available through the catalogue at the National Library of Australia.

The stories informed several multimedia responses from photographs, installations and videos to expanded paintings (a sample is shown here). The final work was a curated ‘act of meaning’: a live and online, multimodal piece with musicians (Nitya Parker, Megan Taylor and Chrissie Shaw) and readers (Kate Butler, Sue Hanna, Tess Horwitz and Gill King) to create a space for shared grief and hope. My body, wearing hessian and drawn with charcoal/ash, was a key visual medium, referencing an ancient lamentation ritual. The audience members were both spectators and active interpreters.

A selection of the work was shown at Tributary Projects (Ainslie Arts Centre, Canberra) as part of the ACT-wide Aquifer program exploring the dimensions of climate change.

The artist holding "Conversation Pieces: Remembering Australia's Black Summer", (Photo by Brenton McGeachie).

"Remembering Black Summer" installation with handmade small wooden table (using fire charred timber from the NSW South Coast) and text from "Conversation Pieces" (Photo by Brenton McGeachie)

Gallery view, "Black Summer Lamentation on City Hill", 2021. Digital print 54 x 73cm (Photo by Brenton McGeachie).

Gallery view of images from performed piece "Black Summer Lamentation on City Hill", 2021. Four digital prints 54 x 73cm each (Photo by Brenton McGeachie).

Still image from 45 minute live performance "Black Summer Lamentation on City Hill", September 12, 2021.

From Conversation Pieces

I just remember being staggered by days and days and days and days of smoke, and not being able to see the sky and it felt like the end of the world. - RHIAN WILLIAMS

It was relentless.. Like nature was broken. - SARAH BACHELARD

[In my repeat dream] I am standing on the top of the hill and under a beautiful tree and looking out over this big expansive landscape and then an atom bomb went off in the distance. And it's incredibly beautiful, a spectacular site and at the same time, I know it's going to destroy me, and there is no point running and so I just stand and watch it. I think the hail storm was like that.. Wild and strange. - TESS HORWITZ

Cortisol [was] just streaming through my blood vessels. I just couldn't wind down. I couldn't find anything to distract me. I couldn’t, I wasn't breathing,.. I started smoking again. - KATE BUTLER

Responses to online performance - Black Summer Lamentation on City Hill

It was a beautiful and devastating piece. I remembered my body feeling great distress from the smoke and the stress of the threat of fire. I remembered the yellow sky when driving to visit my nonagenarian mother. And I take on board the message of love to overcome fear. - ANDREW P

Coming down the Clyde and seeing the devastation of the trees really ripped me apart. I think your multimedia production today fully encapsulated that.. The trees are growing back and every time I go through I say ‘thank you’ to the trees. That’s what I was told by Auntie Nellie, that that’s what you do when you are travelling through ‘country’. While you were working I drew a picture of an atom bomb, and surprisingly then it came up. - SONJA SKAGEN

As a climate activist, I've long mixed with people who are very angry and sad and passionate. But we rarely talk about those emotions, let alone give true vent to them. We go straight to try to fix it. This can be satisfying, but what about these strong, deep emotions? - GERARD DE RUYTER