He Toka Tū Moana: She's a Rock; Murray-Darling Basin

Mata Aho Collective, He Toka Tū Moana: She's a Rock, 2022.
He Toka Tū Moana: She’s a Rock features heavy duty tie down webbing woven between two columns, recognising Barangaroo as a place where fresh and salt water meet through the use of woven text on the webbing, and the directional flow of the straps around the columns.

The work is influenced by a whakataukī (proverb) which draws on imagery of a rock standing firm in the ocean current. Much in the same way that Barangaroo is the name of a strong and staunch Cameraygal woman who lived in the area in the early days of the colony, for the artists, this concept “relates to the resilience of Indigenous knowledge systems carried by women.” Existing on a monumental scale that eclipses the size and reach of an individual body, the work holds a physical space for Indigenous women.

'In researching this project we visited taonga Māori [cultural treasures] in museums in Aotearoa [New Zealand]. We were drawn to customary strapping systems called Kawe […] These woven straps enabled Māori to carry heavy loads, long distances by strapping them to their bodies. We are employing a contemporary counterpart material, heavy duty tie down webbing, to replicate the concept of a kawe.'—Mata Aho Collective

Gal Weinstein, Murray-Darling Basin, 2022.
Open to the elements, Murray-Darling Basin is a living translation of the Murray-Darling Basin made from organic materials. This map grows mould as it receives spores carried through the air. Changing in response to its location, it challenges conventions of cartography, which understands geography as static, passive and unchanging. Its existence highlights the futility of trying to impose qualities of permanence upon living things whose constitution is constantly in a state of flux.

Conservative and popular understandings of rural Australia see it as frozen in time and resistant to change. The environmental transformations happening to the Murray-Darling Basin as a result of extractive human activity, however, are very real. Weinstein reminds us that the Murray-Darling Basin is an infinitely complex and ever-changing ecosystem, that is alive and to which we must listen.

'Subjugating the work Murray–Darling Basin to time, is the point where the work stops being a simple projection of the physical place. The work becomes a Pinocchio of sorts, an uncontrollable organic body that cannot be tamed. Its mutation over time is affected by the site of the installation – heat, light, climate, biological organisms in the air and organisms emitted from the visitors’ bodies.'—Gal Weinstein