Used to be a river 2019 (32°24'50"S 150°38'27"E)
Installation with 2-channel HD video, fibreglass canoe,
native flora and Ulan coal
6:45mins Dimensions variable

Image courtesy Jessie Jane Photography

https://www.artistprofile.com.au/all-things-are-water/

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This work tracks the dry bed of the so-called Goulburn River (named by settlers after a British politician in the 1820’s). This is a river racked with the effects of irrigation, tributary re-direction, water theft, mining, and land misuse – all the result of colonisation. The work is at once an indictment, an act of mourning, and a claim for land reparation and renewal. Used to be a river also counters the pervasive (and insidious) Western understanding of water as non-sentient. The artist acknowledges and pays deep respect to the Wiradjuri & Wonnarua Peoples upon whose ancestral Lands this work was produced.

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