Vast spoils, 2022
sump oil, pewter, plaster, sand, oxide, graphite, mdf, polyester thread, fixings
Exhibited at FELTspace, Adelaide, SA.
Inspired by aerial imagery of Australian open cut mines observed on Google Earth, Vast Spoils reflects on these sites as scars or wounds upon a bodily landscape that are felt across deep time. In 2017, The Australia Institute stated that tens of thousands of mine site have suspended operations, closed or been abandoned across the country, from single mine shafts to unrehabilitated mines or quarries.
Incorporating materials drawn from underground spaces – sand, metal, oil, oxide, graphite and plaster – Vast Spoils sculpturally responds to the physical forces of mining; excavation and extraction, burying and exposing, corrupting and restoring.
Here, each cast holds a trace of a past interaction between human and non-humans – the sawn surface of a root, or the marks left upon dug earth. Vast Spoils looks to draw these human-scale actions into relation with industrial practices, and quietly calls attention to the complicated geological force of humans in the age of the Anthropocene.
Images by Sam Roberts and Tom Blackman.
