Saturated Terrain

Exhibition Dates: 6 - 31 March 2019

In partnership with Art Month Sydney, Willoughby City Council presents an exhibition curated by Art Month’s Artistic Director, Kate Britton.

The Australian psyche is haunted by water. Our home is girt by sea, yet water is scarce. Our watery borders give the impression of impenetrable isolation, yet our oceans connect us to neighbours threatened by climate change and fleeing persecution. Water is a metaphor that perfectly encapsulates these contradictory states.

We employ water as a metaphor to describe things hard and soft, deep and shallow, quiet and deafening, calm and violent. Across vast times and cultures, water is a persistent part of our physical, spiritual, social and cultural lives. Saturated Terrain presents the work of artists who utilise or respond to water and its significance to humanity in some way.  

In Shivanjani Lal and Blake Lawrence’s works, water is a site of transformation, healing and renewal. Tom Blake uses water and its passage to contemplate the fluidity of form. Kieran Bryant proposes waterways as conduits for emotion and queer experience. For Aunty Ethel-Anne Gundy, water is central to understanding country and her traditional weaving practice.  

The heritage listed Willoughby Incinerator, which houses Incinerator Art Space, is one of two remaining incinerator buildings in NSW, designed by architect and landscape architect Walter Burley Griffin and his partner Eric Nicholls. From 1934 to 1967, the space was filled with human waste to be converted into ash, gas and heat by fire.  Saturated Terrain responds to this history by making the gallery fluid. In this context, water is a force of resistance. It cools the violent flames that have engulfed this space many times over. Between the works of these five artists, a sense of water emerges that celebrates ancient knowledge, quiet power, strength in fluidity and emotionality, and transformation. 

ARTISTS: Tom Blake, Kieran Bryant, Aunty Ethel-Anne Gundy, Shivanjani Lal and Blake Lawrence.

Image: Blake Lawrence, Dead Reckoning, 2018, video still. Image by Lou Dietz-Henderson

When

Location

Incinerator Art Space, 2 Small Street, Willoughby, 2068, View Map

Photo gallery