Shelley Watters, Entangled: Bulanaming, 2024, Discarded ironing boards, community gifted non-native plants, repurposed hessian bags, thread, lumen print on Ilford Multigrade FB Classic gloss, WAV audio file (5:40), bluetooth headphones, 320 numbered endemic native seedlings. 3 x 5 x 5m.
New Contemporaries, Sydney College of the Arts
In Atmos magazine, religion and ecology scholar Mary Evelyn Tucker says: “To end the era of hyper individualism, we will need new ways to reform, reshape, and reinvent community…”
The central assemblages of abandoned ironing boards, hessian bags, and community donated non-native plants in Entangled: Bulanaming highlight the similarities between the extraction of value from people and the environment for the benefit of colonial and capitalist expansion. The installation juxtaposes these living sculptures with a lumen print and soundscape produced in the largest surviving reserve of Sydney Turpentine-Ironbark Forest, the Ecological Community which once dominated the Sydney basin, including the area of Bulanaming/Marrickville where the artist lives and tends.
Watters undertakes expansive reading across land art, biodiversity, and participatory practice. Key artists of interest for this project include Agnes Denes, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Mary Mattingly, Sammy Baloji, Amanda Williams, Franz West, and Mikala Dwyer. In Entangled: Bulanaming she combines this with a real-world research practice of growing, planting, listening to, and learning about native ecology to grapple with questions like: “what are my responsibilities in caring for, healing, and tending this land as a white woman whose ancestors are settler/colonisers?” This key question is asked with deep respect for First Nations’ knowledges and relationships to Country, thank you Aunty Deb Lennis and Juundaal Strang-Yettica for sharing your knowledge.
Entangled: Bulanaming exists beyond the gallery.
Throughout New Contemporaries (28 Nov - 7 Dec) 320 gallery visitors who wish to participate in the project, will receive a seedling from the Sydney Turpentine-Ironbark Forest Ecological Community. Please log the planted location of the seedlings using the form below.
Thanks to those from Bulanaming/Marrickville and surrounds who have donated plants including Josh, Claire, Jane, Michele, Lisa, Marge, Jacqui, Vicki, Margaret, Moira and Zoe. My outdoor studio assistants, Claire, Jen, Harper, Dave, Reuben and Jarvis, who supported the production of the monumental lumen print. Finally, to Juundaal Strang-Yettica and Aunty Deb Lennis who have been so generous with their time and knowledge.
Juundaal Strang-Yettica is a proud Bundjalung-Kannakan artist living on Dharawal Country. Her work is focussed on Acknowledging Dharawal Country, which holds her.
Deborah Lennis is a proud Dharawal woman and the Cultural Advisor at Inner West Council.