this week past i had the joy of a roadtrip to the beautiful Arid Lands Botanic Garden at Port Augusta [South Australia]
where i installed 'elegy'
a sculpture composed of bones
for the Arid Sculptural Exhibition
[in turn part of the wider Arid Festival]
the bones were from cows who had died on our paddocks
mostly due to age and infirmity
one of them from snakebite
the exhibition [and festival] takes the theme ‘life on the edge’ and i had proposed an installation created
from animal bones gathered while walking on the edge of the land, the edge that is the
surface where the land meets the sky. these collected bones seemed to me to celebrate the lives
that have passed while providing nourishment for future life.
i have for some years now undertaken the stacking of found
rocks as a meditative aside to my work in textiles and writing. these bones are
a softer material. i planned them to form an interlocking cairn, using
white clay as a bonding medium. the bonecairn, a placemarker intersecting the
edge between earth and sky, would mark the edge between life and death and be devised
to respond to the elements. rain might soften the clay, wind might influence the
form, wild animals could likely create interventions of their own. to all this i was
open.
arriving at my allocated site it seemed to me that a cairn was not appropriate.
i felt [rightly or wrongly] that it would be too intrusive, would pierce the sky
i felt [rightly or wrongly] that it would be too intrusive, would pierce the sky
and so i worked just a few feet to one side of that spot.
laid the bones out in a big curve and sat in its gentle arc, listened to the land
and then one by one
bone by bone
built a circle. no clay required.
i wandered off again
