Murray Darling Palimpsest # 7

2009

Displacement

MURRAY DARLING PALIMPSEST # 7

2009

Displacement

List of Artists 3

Introduction: Neil Fettling 5

Essay: Helen Vivian 9

Lamberts Swamp 12

Wentworth Gaol 15

Mildura Fringe 19

Drought Project 21

Host Organisations 27

Sponsors 28

5

ARTISTS

John Alty

Lauren Berkowitz

Wendy Bolger

Geoffrey Brown

Nikita Burt

Corrine Colbert

Victoria Cooper

Domenico de Clario

Kate Cotching

Neil Fettling

Juan Ford

Pam Fox

Richard Grigg

Siri Hayes

Danielle Hobbs

Kristian Haggblom

Ann & Steve Hederics

Nellie Howden

Phillip Hunter

Denise James

Colin Langridge

Brendan Lee

Anne Lord

Anne Mac Master

Lisa Marshall

Shay Minster

Win Moser

Colleen Morris

Siobhan Murphy

Dimitri Nickas

David Nightingale

Tsuneyoshi Nobata

Anthony Pelchen

Elizabeth Presa

Dominic Redfern

Lee Salomone

Philip Samartzis

Sangeeta Sandrasegar

Kerryn Sylvia

Doug Spowart

Helen Turner

Elizabeth van Herwaarden

Kate Vivian

Shaun Wilson

Dawn Whitehand

John Wolseley

Paul Wood

Tony Yap

Cover image: Juan Ford, Bad to the Bone, mixed media installation; chalk and paint on canvas, easel and gaol chair, (detail). Wentworth Gaol. Photograph: Kristian Haggblom. Page 4: Tsuneyoshi Nobata, Labour and Lust, mixed media installation; collected objects, rubbish and acrylic paint, (detail). Wentworth Gaol. Photograph: Kristian Haggblom.

Danielle Hobbs, The Dinner Party (Emotional Landscape), mixed media installation, (detail). Beginning with one pair of rabbits the installation quickly

multiplied filling the historic dining room of Rio Vista House at the Mildura Arts Centre, the former residence of W.B. Chaffey. Photographs: Danielle Hobbs.

7

Introduction

Mildura Palimpsest was born in 1998, building on the artistic heritage of the Mildura Sculpture Prizes of the 1960s and the

Sculpture Triennials of the 1970s and 1980s. Following the first Mildura Palimpsest in 1998, #2 was conducted in 1999,

#3 in 2000, #4 in 2001, #5 in 2003. Extended to become the Murray Darling Palimpsest #6 in 2006 and now Murray

Darling Palimpsest #7, 2009.

Palimpsest is an Australian contemporary visual arts event, remarkable for its locations in distinctly regional places, rather

than capital cities, and significant for its direct engagement with issues of environmental and social sustainability. It is

unapologetically from the periphery, and was described by Benjamin Genocchio (then art critic for the Sydney Morning

Herald) after visiting Palimpsest #4, as the ‘biennale of the bush’.

Palimpsest (from the Greek word, Palimpsestos, palin (meaning again) psestos (meaning scraped or rubbed smooth) is a

word referring to the successive texts on a manuscript (generally of Medieval origin) on which the original writing has

been erased for re-use.

For the un-initiated, the geometrical patchwork of vivid green horticultural blocks butted against the tonal, organic texture

of the semi-arid desert, is profound. This is then overlayed with the evidences of ‘process’- the natural and human made

scarring of roadways, rivers, cutaways and crusts of white salinity breaking the lands surface. Palimpsest becomes the

metaphor for the way in which land is changed by human activity.

Much of the work produced since 1998, occupies an area of critique about contemporary environmental practices. The

battleground between ideologies of land use. In an essay titled, ‘the post modern turn’, American cultural critic Ihab

Hossan writes, ‘history is a palimpsest, and culture is permeable to time past, time present, and time future’. Palimpsest is

hence intrinsically pluralist.

But Mildura is, like practically all places that have had a history of human placement and displacement, a place of layered

myth. It did experience the inevitable clash of Aboriginal and European culture – leading to the marginalisation of the

Barkindji river groupings and the destruction of the neighbouring Latje Latje tribes.

Even now in one of the fastest growing regional cities in Australia, Mildura the horticultural oasis, is traumatised by an

economic downturn influenced by the worst drought in over 100 years and the effects of climate change, cheaper global

markets, irrigation vs environmental water wars and severely declining natural ecosystems. The recent unsuccessful, but

expedient decision by the Victorian Government to impose a toxic waste dump into the region confirms the prevailing

cultural terra-nullius politics continues to self perpetuate.

In 2006, instead of a Mildura Palimpsest, the concept was pitched to encompass the entire Murray Darling Basin. A

diverse region, geographically linking 4 states – Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia and the

Australian Capital Territory. The basin is defined by a network of river systems, fed by the larger rainfall that falls along

the Eastern escarpment, that meander thousands of kilometres across semi-arid lands and then empty into the southern

ocean at Goolwa in South Australia. This system of rivers and creeks are vital to the socio and economic future of this area.

Communities across the basin share a common challenge. How does one sustain the environmental health of the rivers and

their environs within the increasing demands for water by irrigators expanding into horticulture, viticulture, rice, cotton and

vegetable production? When the mouth of the Murray is closed due to a lack of flow, how do you balance these competing

interests?

Enter Murray Darling Palimpsest. We are not delusional about a biennale art event having the ability to solve issues of

such complexity, but Palimpsest does add to the debate and raise ideas at times with surprisingly effective resonance.

Murray Darling Palimpsest #7 was badged under the conceptual theme of displacement. Water displaced through

excessive use, through to the ultimate displacement of people as well. This approach of layering human aspiration over the

metaphor of place and space is an ambition shared at least with Murray Darling Palimpsest.

Neil Fettling: Chairman, Murray Darling Palimpsest #7, 2009

9

Denise James, The Dance, mixed media installation; beeswax and tree stumps, (detail). Lamberts swamp. Photograph: Kristian Haggblom (top). Mur-

ray Darling Palimpset # 7 audience at Lamberts Swamp. Photograph: Doug Spowart (bottom).

Juan Ford, Bad to the Bone, mixed media installation; chalk and paint on canvas, easel and gaol chair. Wentworth Gaol. Photographs: Kristian Haggblom.

11

Displacement

“Artists are only any good in so far as they have an obsession with something. My obsession is the science of

ecology or the pattern which connects everything.” John Wolseley1

Artists responded to the Murray Darling Palimpsest # 7 theme of ‘displacement’ by creating work which examined

patterns of connection. Interpretations ranged from the literal, to the universal metaphysics of Domenico de Clario’s

memory palace (machine-for-contacting-the-dead). Though perhaps the point of exploring connectivity is ultimately to

demonstrate that the local and the universal may be the same thing.

Palimpsest (meaning a parchment, or similar support, from which writing has been erased to allow the re-inscription of

another text) is a site specific visual art event based in Mildura but extending to a number of communities along the Murray

Darling Basin. It is a multi-venue event utilising a mix of formal gallery spaces (The Mildura Art Centre, The Art Vault

and Stefano’s Gallery 25) and outdoor and informal spaces such as the former Wentworth Gaol, the disused Cottee’s

Cordial Factory, a salt pan (Lamberts swamp), a suburban garden and various studio and outdoor spaces around La Trobe

University and Sunraysia Institute of TAFE. A bus carried visitors between venues to negotiate the geography and

coordinate with onsite artists’ talks at most locations.

Environmental and social sustainability has been the underlying theme of Palimpsest since its inception in 1998. It is a

theme which continues to draw both senior and emerging artists to create site specific works and take part in the

discussions, symposia and convivial dinners (hosted by chef Stefano de Pieri). In 2009 forty-seven artists from all over

Australia, and one from Japan, gathered in Mildura for Palimpsest #7.

Mildura has been a magnet for artists since the Mildura Sculpture Triennials of the 1970s. It’s a powerful location, ancient

song lines stretch across the rivers and lagoons and inland to Lake Mungo. Hugging the rivers, vast blue horizons intersect

with row upon row of vivid green citrus and vines ruled into the red desert sands. The view from the plane flying in shows

that this was once a sea bed of rippling dunes. There is a raw confrontation between the past and the future embodied in

this unique location. The past is not buried here but sketched across the surface of the earth. The future too is in sharp

focus.

Returning art to the real life contexts of open air sites, disused factories and suburban gardens is part of the attraction

Palimpsest holds for artists.

Artist, Dimitri Nickas’ Vertical Garden was installed in the front garden of a Mildura home. Nickas walked past the garden

daily on route to his son’s primary school and asked the householders if they would allow him to install his work as the

centrepiece. No other element of the garden’s careful geometry, of coloured glass, stone, ceramic and contrasting gravel,

was disturbed. Nickas simply added the central structure built from recycled plywood covered with synthetic lawn. The

form is based on the carefully maintained topiary pencil pines in the drive alongside the house (not visible in the photo).

No water required in this garden. Even the flowers in the window box are artificial.

The environmental theme was strengthened in 2000 when Palimpsest #3 was conceived with the visionary addition of an

art/science symposium. The symposium has become an important feature of Palimpsest inviting cross-disciplinary

dialogue on important cultural and environmental themes. John Wolseley opened Palimpsest #3 on the steps of the Mildura

Arts Centre. For Palimpsest #7, the Arts Centre’s exhibitions included re-wind, an excellent selection of artworks from

previous Palimpsest events (1998 – 2006) from the Mildura Arts Centre Collection. It was also the venue for a series of

commissioned installations including Danielle Hobbs - Emotional Landscape, Doug Spowart and Victoria Cooper’s

Borderlines: Water + land in Central Southern Queensland, and Refugia, a collaborative project by dancer Siobhan

Murphy, video artist Dominic Redfern and painter John Wolseley.

Refugia (a biological term to describe a haven in times of crisis) is based on a small area of Mallee scrub that survived

recent fires, providing a place of refuge where animals can shelter and a seed bank for the flora of the area when the crisis

abates. Wolseley described his refugia … “This particular area is very important in the Australian psyche, being on the

edge of the desert and also the biggest rivers in Australia. This region, and the bush generally, is a place to work out our

survival strategies … one of the strategies is to identify those nodal points which are the strongholds of natural and human

culture.”2

13

Dimitri Nickas, Vertical Garden , mixed media installation; synthetic lawn on plywood frame. 228 Ninth St, Mildura. Photograph: Helen Vivian.

Refugia inverts the role of land as subject with a technique which gives the land itself agency in the creative process.

Redfern’s video shows Murphy weaving a slow dance through the burnt landscape while papers left in the landscape by

Wolseley are also being shaped and marked by the same ground. Through this movement the charred scrub inscribes itself

onto the paper’s surface and the dancer’s body. As the artists explained, the work explores “the mark of the land on the

memory and the body,” engaging with a vital discourse which has dominated contemporary land art since Australian

conceptual artists, such as John Davis, began developing their own language of landscape in the early 1970s and post-

colonialism challenged the european landscape paradigm in the early 1980s.

Phillip Hunter also alluded to this discourse, speaking at his drawing exhibition Between The Lines at Stefano’s Gallery

25 ... “The subject of landscape now is so big and so interwoven with every media, film, sound, the internet, and our

various explorations of the origins of space and so on, it seems very different from the subject that landscape was as a

genre. It’s more now the subject of being alive.”

Lamberts Swamp

Denise James’ installation The Dance on the salt pan at Lamberts swamp addressed these ideas from a more personal

perspective. The Dance speaks of the fragility and interconnectedness of all-life and the imminence of death. Constructed

from beeswax sourced from a local apiary, James’ fashioned a series of life-sized standing female figures which clung to

the remnant branches and stumps of trees protruding through the thick crystalline salt surface. In the harsh Mildura sun the

figures soon broke down and, losing their last tenuous grip, slid into a formless yellow stain on the sparkling surface of the

salt. It would be easy for a work of art to be overwhelmed by a landscape as dramatic as this salt pan, but James’ work was

completely in control of the terrible majesty of the site.

In her artist’s talk James told the story of Lamberts swamp, which was once a freshwater wetland teeming with life. A

neighbouring farmer built his home on a rise overlooking the swamp so that he and his wife could enjoy watching the

seasonal migration of the birds. When his wife died he planted a grove of trees in memoriam which, when seen from the

air, spells out her name, ‘Isabella’.

Siobhan Murphy (dance), Dominic Redfern (video), and John Wolseley (drawing), Refugia, mixed media installation and performance. Mildura Arts Centre.

Photographs: Kristian Haggblom. A major drawing from this installation was acquired by the Mildura Arts Centre.

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4 3

6 5

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The Old Wentworth Gaol

The Old Wentworth Gaol component of Palimpsest # 7, curated by Kristian Haggblom, showed work by seventeen artists

and focused on a sub-theme of ‘re-socialisation.’ Haggblom stated that he wanted “to turn things on their head.. This is not

so much about the land, it’s more about how we think and how that creates space.”3 Overall the gaol had a seventies an-

ything goes feel to it, reflecting a renewed interest amongst younger artists in engaging with the conceptual and ephemer-

al art practices that animated art in the seventies.

The most successful works were those which engage directly with the site. Colin Langridge’s neon wanking hand Low

Voltage Rock and Roll, dominated the long central hall between the male prisoners’ cells. Philip Samartzis’ sound-scape

Insect Woman, recorded and engineered on site, provided a unifying thread in an eclectic exhibition. Juan Ford’s fine chalk

on blackboard drawing Bad to the Bone dissected a late C19th portrait of a criminal based on the then popular pseudo

science of Physiognomy (the study of physical appearance as a guide to a person’s character). The medium and the subject

of Ford’s work formed an elegant palimpsest in itself, as the decommissioned gaol was used by a local high school from

1927 until the 1950s for human science classes.

Kate Vivian’s Transformed Landscape, in the courtyard of the Old Wentworth Gaol, utilised ‘wild clays’ which were

worked into ceramic flowers then re-installed en-masse back into the landscape from which the clay was dug. The resulting

work is literally a transformation of the earth into a domesticated, meticulously rowed, monoculture. The repetitive process

of digging and working the clay and slip-casting hundreds of identical flowers evokes the industrious ordering of nature by

agriculture and human settlement that has transformed great tracts of the earth. In this case the 500 ceramic flowers have

been displaced from their original site near Ballarat into the Old Wentworth Gaol. Transformed Landscape has an austere

beauty and speaks of the confinement of the human spirit.

The two womens’ cells were occupied by Sangeeta Sandrasegar and Shay Minster. Shay Minster’s five metre high

inflatable clown, (à la the larger than life figures which welcome drivers into roadside carwashes and the like), expressed

her concern with “something being forced into a space where it can’t fulfil its intended purpose, it can’t be itself. These air

dancers are very active they dance about like crazy and here it’s restricted by the shape and size of the cell.”4

1. Kate Vivian, Transformed Landscape, mixed media installation; ceramics and steel rod. 2. Paul Wood, Pop Fountain, mixed media installation; re-fired

ceramics. 3. Lee Salomone, It is what it is, mixed media installation; beer bottle tops. 4. Shay Minster, Slow Dance, mixed media installation; blow-up

clown and blowers. 5. Kate Cotching, Solid Ideas on Fragile Foundations, mixed media installation; egg shells, pencil and cotton. 6. Colin Langridge,

Low Voltage Rock and Roll, neon installation. All Wentworth Gaol. Photographs: Kristian Haggblom

In an adjoining cell Sangeeta Sandrasegar created an exquisite wall mounted cut out based on the myth of Medusa. Take

away that monster/That face that makes men stone, whoever she is, is a powerful statement on the enforcement of social

norms and the vicious circle of motherless abandonment that often leads to gaol. The use of myth deepened the resonances

of the work to encompass the erotic and the creative in the indomitable female spirit. The artist’s lucid description of her

work reveals her research into the incarceration of women which informed this piece.

“Medusa is cast outside the legal canon of women by the dominant yet barren warrior figurehead Athena (after being raped

by Poisedon in one of Athenas’s temples). Sentenced to isolation on a stony island outcrop and with her once lustrous hair

turned to snakes, the Gorgoan Medusa’s will to beauty and to make life (thus also take it away) is imbued in her power to

turn men to stone. When eventually beheaded by Perseus, even in death Medusa gives life: from her neck springs forth the

fully formed giant Chrysaor, and from her blood the winged Pegasus. In depicting the slaying of a mother and her

incarceration, the story puts forth a representation of the wily mother. The giant marked out in the manner of police

outlines of dead bodies - is already a victim. Already a target of the state, without mother, protection and home. His

sentence is fully formed at his birth.”5

A Well Stocked Fridge, a collaboration between local artists Neil Fettling and Peter Peterson, entered darker terrain. For

nearly twenty years Fettling has created works from recovered relics of failed settlement from the Mallee to the Millewa.

His most recent obsession has been excavating old shoes from the saline slime at Lake Tyrrell. A Well Stocked Fridge

brought Fettling’s forensic examination of colonial failure together with Peterson’s poignant personal history as an

Aboriginal man and Barkindji elder. The installation is composed of three parts: a fridge with a drawing by Peterson on

the open door is stuffed with shoes donated by men from the local Aboriginal community, an offering bowl of fridge

magnets which bear the slogan “no survivors only leftovers” and the cell itself which has been darkened and left bare.

The fridge is a multi-layered metaphor. A familiar domestic object, a ‘white good,’ displaced from the home, its shape

evokes a tomb or the cell itself. The shoes have echoes of the Holocaust and of the process of assimilation in outback

missions where Aboriginal people report that the enforced wearing of shoes was an intolerable restriction of their freedom.

The first thing that happens when you enter gaol is your shoes are taken away, because of the laces. The cell also is a

symbolic site representing the gulf between non-indigenous males, for whom a gaol experience is rare, and indigenous

males, for whom it is all to common to have had a stint in gaol.

Fettling described the significance of the fridge magnets “I still find it strange the way the Howard Government used the fridge

magnet as a way of terrorising us with their anti-terrorism policies. The inscription ‘no survivors only leftovers’... we all have

leftovers in the fridge, but those people who came out of prison after twenty-five years were all leftovers, they weren’t survivors.”6

19

Sangeeta Sandrasegar, Take away that monster/That face that makes men stone, whoever she is, mixed media installation; felt, cotton thread, glass beads

and sequins. Wentworth gaol. Photograph: Helen Vivian.

Page 18: Neil Fettling and Peter

Peterson, A Well Stocked Fridge,

mixed media installation; fridge,

shoes, fridge magnets and pencil

drawing. Wentworth Gaol.

Photograph: Kristian Haggblom

Page 19: Kerryn Sylvia, Hydrometry,

(left), mixed media installation;

wooden bowls, wire, wool, paint and

wick. Mildura Fringe, Sunraysia

Institute of TAFE Lake. Photograph:

Helen Vivian.

Page 19: Anne McMaster, (right)

Tracing a Line, mixed media

installation; collected crockery and

glass. Mildura Fringe, Sunraysia

Institute of TAFE squash court gallery.

Photograph: Helen Vivian.

21

The Mildura Fringe

The Mildura Fringe component, curated by local artist Geoffrey Brown, represented twenty local and interstate artists whose

strong engagement with the whole event added diversity and dynamism to the dialogue. The Fringe contributes a wonderful

potentiality to the sprawling eclecticism of Palimpsest, both geographically and artistically. Loosely held together by the overall

theme the works cluster like small galaxies into sympathetic or accidental convergences of form or concept. The Fringe utilised a

variety of spaces mainly around the La Trobe University / Sunraysia Institute of TAFE campus.

Several works pushed the boundaries with the use of subversive materials, such as Elizabeth van Herwaarden’s The Great

Recycler, fashioned from mould, Anne Lord’s Mulch for Deep Time, an installation of domestic cleaning containers

wrought from garden mulch, and Corinne Colbert’s whimsical Wind Sock Frock. These were strong and humorous

responses to the environmental imperative. Kerryn Sylvia’s Hydrometry was more poetic. Her found wooden bowls

connected by barely visible fine wire moved soundlessly over the surface of the lake in response to each puff of wind.

Floating ‘outside consciousness’ this meditative work revealed the power of transposition. In this altered context these

simple utilitarian objects acquired a sacred quality, like church bells or temple bowls. Anne McMaster created a jewel like

assemblage of found fragments of crockery and coloured glass collected from local rubbish tips. The work paid homage to

early women settlers and their gift of beauty.

Lauren Berkowitz, Graceful, (top)

mixed media installation; paper,

pastel, spices and artist’s book -

Graceful by Febrice Melquiot,

published by Collective Generation

(France), featuring soft pastel and

spices on paper by Lauren Berkowitz

and poetry by Febrice Melquiot.

The Art Vault. Photograph: Kristian

Haggblom.

Anthony Pelchen in collaboration

with Tony Yap and Sean O’Brien,

Difficult Majesty, (below) mixed

media installation and performance;

(detail of shot gun cartridge floor

installation). The Art Vault.

Photograph: Kristian Haggblom

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Drought

The exhibition Drought, staged principally at the Art Vault, involved artists Anthony Pelchen, Tony Yap, Sean O’Brien,

Lauren Berkowitz, Elizabeth Presa and Domenico de Clario. Curated by Lella Cariddi Drought engaged with the broader

concept of spiritual, emotional and cultural lack. As Cariddi put it, “DROUGHT with a capital D, as a state of longing,

absence, or exclusion, which can be experienced, by individuals and/or groups who by omission, or by commission find

themselves in an alien socio/cultural environment, thus distant and excluded from both the hearth and from the traffic of

mainstream Australian socio-cultural engagement.”7

Drought included a starkly minimal and deeply affecting installation of shot gun shells by Anthony Pelchen, which was

one element of his collaboration Difficult Majesty created with Tony Yap (Butoh performance) and Sean O’Brien (film). In

an adjoining space Lauren Berkowitz, created images from the poem Graceful by French author Fabrice Mequiot and

publisher Gervais Jassaud. Berkowitz utilised spices (such as turmeric and cumin) and soft pastels to create fields of colour

and texture infused with an intense aroma. Elizabeth Presa’s manners, made from bundles of gauze and plaster blended

with recycled water the artist had used for bathing and washing dishes or clothes. Like a series of diaries, the folded plaster

infused gauze documents the residues and textures of objects, experiences and places, through a process that is itself part of

the ‘manners’ of using water in this time of drought.

The final element in Drought took place at the Old Cottee’s Factory, a cavernous industrial site which was fully utilised by

Domenico de Clario’s vast, complex and deeply layered installation and performance memory palace (machine-for-

contacting-the-dead). The performance, a twelve hour all night vigil of blindfolded piano playing, began at full moon rise

on Good Friday and ended at dawn the following day. The piano playing activated the machine. All night it yearned and

trilled towards the spirit – that which is not, or is no longer, material.

It was possible to envision the installation as either a machine or an organism. De Clario referred to both in his artist’s talk:

the line of fluorescent lights beneath the central grated drain in the main chamber - the spine, the array of lights around the

periphery - the nerve endings, the entry rooms (relatively small) - life, the main room (vast and cavernous) - death, the

warehouse with its playful fountain and small ante-chamber filled with children’s chairs arrayed around a box of birds

nests filled with eggs - childhood, or perhaps the unborn, or the unrealised lives that are not being lived by the living.

De Clario created something of a Plato’s cave, complete with an illusory fire to add to the cave-like effect. A chandelier

placed on the concrete floor in the centre of the courtyard almost outshone the moon. It drew the audience like any

campfire would.

When first viewed the whole installation appeared to be a haphazard configuration of eclectic junk linked by electrical cord

and neon light. In places it coalesced into a dense almost ordered clutter. Throughout the installation a strange array of

tubular steel dressing chairs was positioned like sentinels around the room. Each chair was connected by electrical cord

and demarcated by paired verticals of coloured fluorescent tubes which bathed each one in a different wash of intensely

coloured light. The chairs represented a small claimable personal space within a communal space such as a large family (or

the planet) – ‘my chair’ – and therefore the territory we can claim as a temporary dominion for ourselves. De Clario

explained that the dressing chairs also signified the careful attention bestowed on appearances throughout life whilst the

fluorescent light reflected the colours of the seven chakras of Hindu mysticism.

The chairs created nodal points that play between the outer and inner life, the visible and the invisible. In front of each

dressing chair, where a mirror might be expected, the artist has drawn a ‘Platonic solid’8 as a focus for contemplation. Our

attention is focused on the wall where the faint ‘platonic solid,’ only centimetres from our noses, is lost in the gloom.

Instead the eye is constantly drawn by the exquisite play of colour and shadow thrown by the brightly coloured neon tubes

against the textured surfaces of wall and floor.

De Clario states that the work “does not attempt to transport us elsewhere; rather it attempts, through creating opportunities

for an experience of the invisible, to function as a catalyst for a deeper interaction with the visible.”9 In this play between

the real and the imaginary, the visible and the invisible, perhaps the chairs signify not just the way we dress our ‘selves’

but also the importance given to appearance and form by philosophers such as Plato.

De Clario’s concern for the visible, the real, is a grappling with knowledge and truth, with existence, not fantasy or

illusion. By evoking Plato, the father of Western thought,10 de Clario draws us into an exploration of the essence of our

culture, of knowledge and the knowable. But he appears also to be challenging Plato by drawing the audience deeper into

the cave, into contemplation of the inner life of the spirit, and away from reason and light. The installation is designed to

be experienced in the dark of night not in the light of day.

Speaking as though memory palace (machine-for-contacting-the-dead) is sentient, de Clario said, “Its ultimate hope is that

through this process it may provide an opportunity to glimpse the indivisibility that permeates all worlds and all things.”11

Perhaps then he is saying that the ‘indivisibility’ of the material and the spiritual, the visible and invisible, is the light, and

everything else is just shadows on the wall.

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Domenico de Clario, memory palace (machine-for-contacting-the-dead), mixed media installation and performance; found objects, fluorescent tubes, electrical

wire, grand piano. The Old Cottee’s Factory, Tenth St, Mildura. Photographs: images 1 and 2: Kristian Haggblom (main factory space); image 3: Helen Vivian

(secondary warehouse space); image 4: Helen Vivian (main factory space).

1 2

3 4

Domenico de Clario, memory palace (machine-

for-contacting-the-dead), mixed media

installation and performance. The Old Cottee’s

Factory, Tenth St, Mildura. Photographs - top:

Kristian Haggblom (outdoor courtyard space);

bottom: Helen Vivian (main factory space with

audience).

27

For many indigenous cultures, including Australian Aboriginal cultures, the indivisibility of matter and spirit and the

connectedness of all life is a central principle. This concept is now familiar to us from Eastern mysticism at least. But the

Western mind has great difficulty understanding it because it is not a matter to be grasped simply by the mind, but by the

whole organism, all-life. To grasp this simple idea fully is a project so vast that perhaps the only way through is

contemplation under the full moon guided by the seed sounds of the universe.

By a fascinating coincidence, while driving from Melbourne to view Palimpsest I heard an Australian scientist on the radio

talking about a recent achievement of his group of colleagues. They have mapped a corner of the universe. A very difficult

thing to do since it must be mapped in three dimensional space. What they found was that galaxies are distributed, not

evenly, or randomly, but gather in nodal constellations of varying densities along meandering filaments of interconnection.

Like populations (of people, birds, animals, plants) along rivers.

Whether the population of the Murray Darling Basin is sustainable or not will depend on how we think about or imagine

the future here. Mildura, for one, is doing an extraordinary job of sustaining the discourse on these vital issues.

But there is a profoundly under-represented element in Palimpsest, as in the whole discourse on these issues in the art

world and the wider community, and that is engagement with Aboriginal Australia. As David Mowaljarlai said, “we have a

gift for white people, but they are having difficulty accepting it ... it's the gift of pattern thinking. It's the culture which is

the blood of this country, of Aboriginal groups, of the ecology, of the land itself.”12 Until a meaningful dialogue is opened

up Australia will always be living in the shadows of its Colonial past.

Helen Vivian

ENDNOTES

1. John Wolseley, interview with the author, Palimpsest #7, 4 April 2009.

2. ibid

3. Kristian Haggblom, interview with the author, Palimpsest #7, 4 April 2009.

4. Shay Minster, interview with the author, Palimpsest #7, 4 April 2009.

5. Sangeeta Sandrasegar, Palimpsest #7, official website, www.artsmildura.com.au

6. Neil Fettling, interview with the author, Palimpsest #7, 4 April 2009.

7. Lella Cariddi, exhibition room sheet, Drought, Palimpsest #7, 2009.

8. There are five platonic solids much discussed by geometers over many millennia, most famously Euclid in his book Elements. Plato associated four of the solids with the elements earth, air, fire and water, the fifth he described as used by God “for arranging the constellations on the whole heaven.” http://en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonic_solid. See also http://en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/

Allegory_of_the_cave.

9. Domenico de Clario, room sheet no 2, Good Friday, 10 April 2009, Palimpsest #7, (unpublished).

10. Alfred North Whitehead famously described all of western philosophy as “just a series of footnotes to Plato” Process and Reality, p.39, Free Press, 1979.

11. Domenico de Clario, room sheet no 2, Good Friday, 10 April 2009, Palimpsest #7, (unpublished).

12. David Mowaljarlai interviewd by Susanna Lobez, The Law Report, ABC Radio National, 31 Oct 1995.

I am grateful to Barry Hill for enlightening me about the seed sounds that accompany each of the seven chakras in Hindu mysticism and for his assistance with clarifying Plato’s Allegory of the cave.

Victoria Cooper and Doug Spowart, Avochie, still photograph, from Borderlines: Water + Land in central southern Queensland, Mildura Arts Centre. Photograph:

Victoria Cooper and Doug Spowart.

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Host Organisations

John Mullins Memorial Art Gallery: Dogwood Crossing (Qld),

Water = Life – Fay Head, Catherine Rose, Elizabeth Beeton, Kim

Semple-Ashlin, Priscilla Mundell, Pat Hinz, Carol McCormack,

Catherine Rose, Lynette Fabian, Di McIntyre, Kerry Mulholland.

Image (top): Carol McCormack, Warrego Reflections at Baker's Bend

Broken Hill Art Exchange Inc (NSW): John Alty, River of Time

Exhibited SuniTAFE Building R, Room 42 (Lighting Studio)

John Alty is a contemporary artist who’s work is represented in

many private collections throughout the world as well as the

University of Tasmania. The Broken Hill Art Exchange Inc. is a

volunteer and artist run organisation. The aim of the organisation is

to facilitate artist exchanges and promote artists and art practices.

Swan Hill Regional Art Gallery (Vic): Dis Place – This Place

Tom Fitzgerald, Ron Eden, Sheridan Williams, Lycia Trouton, Tom

Hentyand Lexie Ramptha Edwards.

A range of responses to Dis Place – This Place, from installation

pieces to collaborations involving musical performance and multi

media projections.

Image (middle): Ron Eden, Untitled digital print, 2008

The Palmer Project (SA): Adaptation

Participating artists: Greg Johns, Sue Kneebone, Gavin Malone,

Anne Newmarch, Tis Milner-Nicholls, Astra Parker, Vic Waclawik.

The Palmer Project is a long-term art exhibition and ecological

rehabilitation project on 163 ha of land located on the eastern

escarpment of the Mount Lofty Ranges, 17 km from the River Mur-

ray.

Image (bottom): Sue and Trevor Rodwell Palmer Escarpment

murray darling palimpsest #7: supporting sponsors w w w . a r t s m i l d u r a . c o m . a u

Arts Mildura welcomes sponsor and donor

enquiries and has deductible gift status allowing

donations to be fully tax deductible. Contact the

Director on (03) 5021 5100 for further

information or to make a donation.

murray darling palimpsest #7: major sponsors

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

With thanks to the artists, volunteers, all our sponsors and supporters and to Helen Vivian for preparing this catalogue. This event would not be possible without the tireless efforts of the Mildura Arts Centre staff, HHO Events, Mildura and the Murray Darling Palimpsest #7, 2009 Committee:

Neil Fettling (chairman), Ross Lake, Geoff Brown, Kristian Haggblom, Stefano de Pieri, Antonette Zema, Helen Turner, Julian Bowron, Kirsten Henderson, Michelle Kavanagh, Julie Chambers.

Project Director: Helen Healy

Fringe Curators: Kristian Haggblom, Geoff Brown

Project Assistants: Kate Cotching, Kara Smith, Erin Hoye, Rachel Kendrigan

Published by Mildura Arts Centre and Arts Mildura Mildura Arts Centre, Ph: 03 5015 8330 PO Box 105, Mildura, Vic 3502 Email: Arts_centre@mildura.vic.gov.au Arts Mildura, Ph: 03 50215100 www.artsmildura.com.au

ISBN: 978-0-9807428-1-7

Copyright © 2010, Mildura Arts Centre,

© the artists (images), © the authors (text)

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, or utilised in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without permission from the publisher.

Designed and edited by Helen Vivian

Images: Kristian Haggblom (unless otherwise noted)

Printed by Picpic Printing, Hawthorn East, Vic 3123.

This is a handmade book, 1st edition 200, Sept 2010.

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