Unsettling
Botany Bay is redolent with contested history. Aboriginal people have had an unbroken connection to the land on the northern peninsula dating back over 5,000 years. The southern shore of the bay was the site of Captain Cook’s first landfall in 1770, and as such, Botany Bay is considered the birthplace of the Australian nation. It is, therefore, an unsettling irony that this site, so laden with history and named for its abundance of botanical diversity, has experienced such relentless environmental disruption over the past century.
This body of work examines the industrialisation of Botany Bay that has occurred since the 1940s.
The work juxtaposes the past and the present whilst problematising the notion of a natural landscape.
Shoreline
(2022)
Inkjet prints, pigment inks on cotton archival photo paper, fluorescent spike tape.
Settler visions of nature have long been made in landscape painting. However, since the mid-1860s, as the photographic process became more portable, photography provided an opportunity to speed up the production and distribution of imagery. In Australia, landscape photography soon developed a supporting role in settler colonisation, perpetuating the myth of untouched land whilst obscuring the history of indigenous Australians. The shoreline of Botany Bay is dominated by an industrial history that is impossible to conceal.
Plume
(2022)
Inkjet prints, pigment inks on cotton archival photo paper.
The site, now known as Botany Industrial Park, has been used for manufacturing chemicals and related products since the 1940s. Ignorance in the past and lack of environmental controls have led to significant contamination of the surrounding area. Below the surface, carcinogenic chemicals mix with groundwater to form a toxic plume covering an area of about 2 square kilometres. The plume moves at a speed of 120m per year and is only a few hundred metres from Botany Bay.
Arrival/Departure
Three-channel digital video with sound, 5 minutes.
Botany Bay is now far from being untouched land. Despite engineering reports declaring its unsuitability, the government forged ahead with its plan to develop and expand the port, suggesting that it would vindicate Cook’s opinion of the bay as a ‘capacious, safe and convenient harbour.’ The reshaping of the bay to allow for the port and airport runways has permanently disrupted the natural tidal flows, currents and waves.
