Seven Forms (Collie '22)
In this exhibition, seven artists observe layers of meaning attached to sites and artifacts encountered in the Collie region. Seven Forms offers viewers an altered way of seeing familiar places and things. The artists create work inspired by Collie while bringing to the task their ability to produce material formations that connect industrial culture and the physical world. This is done in ways that resonate with concern at environmental disruption and optimism at opportunity for change.
Curated by Janice Baker, the artists are Monika Lukowska, Layli Rakhsha, Sarah Robinson, Melanie McKee, Alana McVeigh, Susanna Castleden and Sue Starken.
The images in this series are of natural sites around Collie that are associated with leisure activities; swimming, walking, hiking and camping. Over each of these images an aerial map of the dead mining tenements associated with each particular place has been printed, creating a geometric delineation over the landscape. In these works, there is a tension between the image of the place as experienced on the ground, as a site of leisure, and the demarcation of the same place by the speculative value of what is, or was, below the ground.
All photo credits Melanie McKee