Crane Arts QCA Exhibitions March 2014

Jennifer Sanzaro-Nishimura

Jude Roberts

Pacific Perimeter Print Exchange 2012–14

Undermining Landscape Jennifer Sanzaro-Nishimura

Aquifer Jude Roberts

Vie De Pacifique / Pacific Life Pacific Perimeter Print Exchange 2012–14

Thursday 13 March – Sunday 6 April 2014 Opening: Thursday 13 March from 6–9 pm Crane International Project Space (gallery 105)

Crane Arts 1400 N. American St. Philadelphia, PA 19122 215.232.3202 www.cranearts.com

J E N N I F E R S A N Z A R O - N I S H I M U R A U N D E R M I N I N G L A N D S C A P E 2 0 1 4

Screenprints and mixed media on Kozo paper and Somerset

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This body of work investigates the effects of mining on the Australian Landscape, in particular open cut mining. Australia is a mineral rich country that derives much of its income from mining and its associated industries. The Australian economy has become so reliant on the mining industry that devastating changes have impinged on the pastoral, farming and regional areas not to mention the Traditional Land owners.

Politically it is a minefield of deceptive reports and Media.

It is not only the visible physical effects on the landscape that I investigate, it is the effects on the environment, flora and fauna, our climate, the underground water tables and the Traditional Owners. The colours I use represent the desert landscape (where much of the mining takes place) and the toxic substances that are used and produced in mining processes. The tragic

consequences of mining are experienced firsthand by Indigenous Australians who live traditionally in those remote areas; the eradication of their way of life and desecration of significant sacred Indigenous sites in specific areas is being ignored.

I grew up near Australia’s largest open cut brown coal mines in Victoria; I remember waking up to orange ‘snow’ and orange rain from the ash emitted from those coal fired power stations in the Latrobe Valley some fifty miles away. This was a common occurrence well into my teen years, when I moved out of the area. Victoria still derives 90% of its electricity from brown coal fired power stations.

drums and leached into the water supply of the surrounding Kakadu National Park, an area with a very sensitive ecology. In Western Australia, mining corporations are cutting through sacred sites in the Pilbara containing petroglyphs 40,000 years old while our government turns a blind eye. At what point do we say enough is enough?

Dr Jenny Sanzaro-Nishimura BVA Hons, GCHE, DVA President Impress Printmakers Studio Lecturer in Print Media Queensland College of Art Griffith University Queensland

In December 2013, toxic radioactive waste from the Ranger Uranium mine in Northern Territory, rusted through storage 5

Jennifer Sanzaro-Nishimura 2014 Deep Cut Panel Serigraph and frottage on Kozo paper Approx 6 metres X 45 cm

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UNDERMINING LANDSCAPE

Jennifer Sanzaro-Nishimura 2014 Toxic Undermining I diptych Serigraph and frottage on Somerset 60 cm X 40 cm (each)

Jennifer Sanzaro-Nishimur 2014 Toxic Undermining I diptych Serigraph, photocopy transfer on Somerset 60 cm X 40 cm (each)

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Jennifer Sanzaro-Nishimura 2014 Undermining Landscape Panel Serigraph, frottage, photocopy transfer on Kozo paper Approx 6 metres X 45 cm 8

UNDERMINING LANDSCAPE

Jennifer Sanzaro-Nishimura 2014 Poison Landscape Panel Serigraph and frottage on Kozo paper Approx 6 metres X 45 cm

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JUDE ROBERTS To be a writer or an artist preoccupied with landscape is to accept a weird and constant tension between the indoors and the outdoors, the abstract and the sensual. You work from both mind and body‌you have to be thin skinned.

Winton, T (2013)1

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The art making process I use is in response to the physical sites I have worked on in areas of the Great Artesian Basin of Eastern Australia. Drawing imprinting and transferring information from various specific water locations has developed my investigations into human concepts of time in relation to geology and history.

Experimentation with various print making processes including lithography unearth the real, the imaginary, the tangible and the intangible as themes in my work.

The works reinstate the connections of groundwater and ephemeral watersheds; the springs, bores, creeks and rivers and their significance both geographically and metaphorically. The Great Artesian Basin is a complex hydro-geological system expanding across a fifth of Australia’s continent. Its multiple layers of aquifers (porous) and aquiludes (non-porous) carry

and store water across an expanse of Australia’s inland areas. Aquifers form the most extensive array of freshwater on our planet and are as yet not fully understood scientifically. Recent research has revealed further complexities of Australia’s basin structures and connectivity to other older or more recently formed geological basins.2 Both in literal and metaphysical terms, the terrain of the earth is a floor for human and geological activity, but also a ceiling for Australia’s artesian basins. This layer is always shifting and in constant flux particularly now with human forces accelerating these changes. The streamside eucalypt and related vegetation along inland rivers and streams are ecosystems that are entirely dependent on groundwater in the arid zone of Australia, of which I have lived for over twenty years. These dryland systems have an inherent flow

variability which causes their ephemeral and unpredictable qualities. It is this characteristic that has fascinated me as I have spent much time on creek and river beds while raising my children, and later drawing on these areas. The duration of time has enabled me to observe variables to the land which happen momentarily, daily, seasonally and over longer tracts of time.

For the past two years I have been part of the Bimblebox Arts Project3 which seeks to bring awareness to the uniqueness and fragility of the ecosystem at risk of being destroyed from one of the largest coal mines in the world. At the Bimblebox Nature Reserve on the Galilee Basin in Central Queensland, I suspended the tarpaulins made from sheets of hosho paper and from tyvek over ‘demarcated’ areas of shrubby heathlands, spinifex communities, pockets of yellow jacket 11

trees and grasses. Tarpaulins are normally made from canvas and are used to cover truck and cargo loads as well as protecting stockpiles from weather. This canopied gesture symbolized the protection or isolation of these ecosystems and the histories they represent. Being present, making contact with these environments allows the transference of an organism to another skin such as paper or tyvek.

Natural and constructed artifacts in the landscape are used within my practice to focus on these interventions. They are implemented as mediums, formats and tools to convey the connectivity of land and water systems. The use of highly visible fluorescent objects by road construction and mining companies is now a part of the dramatic visual changes in Queensland’s inland communities. This is conveyed in the work with ‘hi-vis’ tape and references 12

its wider cataclysmic implications on the Galilee Basin. Other materials include cochineal which has been collected from scale insects living on the Velvet pear tree in Western Queensland, both of which are introduced species to Australia.

material surface, capturing a specific moment in the object’s history.

The tyvek tarpaulin has been frottaged to resemble ancient text or sacred inscription.

These hieroglyphic marks are made by rubbing graphite over borer indentations from hollow trees. I imagine the markings to be some form of divine thinking or message as was the case in ancient civilizations.

The process begins with drawing on the limestone block, a porous surface to take the water and grease used to make the matrix. Part of the etching procedure involves replacing the greasy materials such as tusché and crayons into the drawn areas with ink in the roll up stage while water is either repelled or retained as the result of these conditions. Within the process of printmaking an exchange of material is transferred from one body to another.

Wrapping an object and rubbing across its indentations and outlines is an action both physical and gestural. This technique of frottage is a way of conveying an absolute concrete reality or a proof of existence.4 It transfers the geography of the object including its history and aura onto the

This idea of transference also applies to the series of lithographs printed primarily on Japanese papers in variable unique states.

I would like to acknowledge the Gungarri, Bidjarra and Kooma people of Western Queensland, who are the traditional custodians of the land that is the area of my research project.

Endnotes 1. WINTON, T 2013 Wild Brown Land, The Australian, Dec 14-15 Review p.12 2. RANSLEY, T., SMERDON, BD 2012. Hydrostratigraphy, hydrogeology and system conceptualisation of the Great Artesian Basin. A technical report to the Australian Government from the CSIRO Great Artesian Basin Water Resource Assessment.

In: BD, R. T. A. S. (ed.). CSIRO. 3. Bimblebox arts project http://bimbleboxartproject.wordpress.com/about-bimblebox-art-project/ 4. FONTANEZ, L 1997 Foreign Bodies Ian Howard; Survey Exhibition 1967-1997, . Drill Hall Gallery, The Australian National University, Canberra 5-21 Dec 1997.

5. Images courtesy of; Jill Sampson, Carl Warner, Alice Roberts, Jude Macklin, and the Artist.

6. Footage and editing of video in exhibition courtesy of Tangible Media Australia and the Artist.

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AQUIFER: ARTIST PROCESS

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Untitled , hand coloured (h/c) lithograph with cochineal on bamboo paper, 62 x 98cm 2014

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AQUIFER

Untitled, h/c lithograph with cochineal on Japanese paper, 52cm x 42cm 2014

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Divine Message, graphite and reflective tape on tyvek with rope and eyelets, 3000 cm x1450mm, 2013

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AQUIFER

Untitled, h/c lithograph with found cochineal on Japanese paper, 52cm x 75cm, 2014

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Untitled, monoprint and lithograph with found cochineal on Arches paper, 50cm x 65cm 2014

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AQUIFER

Untitled, lithograph on gampi paper, 55cm x 82cm 2014

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Untitled , h/c lithograph with ochre, 50cm x 65cm 2013

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AQUIFER

Untitled, h/c lithograph with found cochineal on Japanese paper, 49cm x 66cm 2014

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PACIFIC PERIMETER PRINT EXCHANGE 2012–14 Including artists from: Impress Printmakers Studio, Brisbane Taller 99 Studio, Chile University of Hawaii, Manoa Joshibi University of Art and Design, Japan Green Lane Studio, New Zealand Printmakers Association of the Philippines Motalava artists, Vanuatu

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Impress Printmakers Studio have initiated this exchange to coincide with the 7th Asia Pacific Triennial in Brisbane, it also coincides with the Association of South Sea Islanders 150 Years Commemoration in 2013. Conceived, coordinated and curated

by Impress president Jenny SanzaroNishimura, it is a collaboration between printmakers from seven countries around the Pacific Ocean. Vie de Pacifique – Pacific Life gives the peoples of the Pacific a platform to express their concerns for the region through the many and varied forms of print media.

of colonisation, the dumping of human and industrial discardments and other environmental or political concerns that affect these waters.

The theme enables artists to express their cultural identity and explore their relationship with the Pacific Ocean; culturally, as a source of life and beauty, a source of food, an element of nature and as a place of travel and recreation.

Consideration is also given to the effects

Dr Jenny Sanzaro-Nishimura BVA Hons, GCHE, DVA President Impress Printmakers Studio Lecturer in Print Media Queensland College of Art Griffith University Queensland

This folio includes works by artists from Australia, Chile, Hawaii, Japan, New Zealand, the Philippines and Vanuatu; the prints are exhibited in each of these countries extending well into 2014.

It is hoped that this will become a triennial event.

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Ayaka Kobayashi (Japan) Galaxy Song 2012 Wood block 21 X 29

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VIE DE PACIFIQUE / PACIFIC LIFE

Benji Cabrero-Torrado (Philippines) Belts of Iconic Power 2012 Intaglio print 21 X 29

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Charles Cohan (Hawaii) At Sea 2012 Woodcut and Intaglio 29 X 21

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Vie De Pacifique / Pacific Life

Susan Hurrell-Fieldes (New Zealand) It is the Land my Friend 2012 Bamboo plate etching 21 X 29

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Krishna Nahow (Vanuatu/Australia) You Pullim mi Long 2012 Screen Print Screen Print 29 X 21

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Vie De Pacifique / Pacific Life

Jenny Sanzaro-Nishimura (Australia) Peaceful Pacific 2012 Screen Print Screen Print 29 X 21

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Soledad Gonzalez-Munita (Chile) Llave 2012 Etching 21 X 29

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Vie De Pacifique / Pacific Life

Colin Hopkins (Vanuatu Turtle Story 2012 Etching 21 X 29

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ISBN: 978-1-922216-31-1 Authors: Jude Roberts and Jennifer Sanzaro-Nishimura Editor: Ross Woodrow This exhibition is supported by the Griffith University Centre for Creative Arts Research.

Catalogue designed at Liveworm Studio, South Bank by Rosie Gardner.