Mapping Internal & External Terrains - Community Cartography
Materials: Earth Pigments, bush fire charcoal and ash and flood mud samples gathered from across Bundjalung,
Gumbaynggirr and Yaegl Country, Northern Rivers, NSW. Works on boards
Dimensions: 20cm Diameter x 40 works
Install requirements: Variations of work can be ordered and installed to fit site-specific requirements.
In
their gridded, orderly presentation, Mapping Internal &
External Terrains - Community Cartography (2023) documents
Barnes’ social engagement practice. Produced with pigments
submitted by community contributors on the east coast of Australia
the installation explores the intersection of art, mapping, and
personal experiences through the collection and identification of
earth pigments of Bundjalung Country, Northern Rivers area, NSW, Australia.
Through a colour palette of earth pigments, clays, ochres, food mud,
bushfire ash, bushfire charcoal, and soils, the works tell the
stories of the community colour pigment contributors and the geology
of the land. From cataclysmic environmental events to the subtleties
of geological time, participatory experiences of being shaped
by shifting terrains and landscapes are reflected in these works.
Examples
of the pigment samples and stories include: “Bush fire charcoal
taken from the landscape of the Northern Rivers bush fires of 2019”;
“Murwillumbah flood mud 2022, South Murwillumbah flooded shed”; "Mullumbimby Metamophic Pink- baked under the ancient 20 million year lava flow of the Wollumbin Volcano"
and “Red Rock composed of 300-million-year-old Jasper”. In these
works, Barnes has composed the pigment samples into lush tonal arrays of
subtly varying reds and yellows, umbers, greys and blacks. This
methodical study of the aesthetic qualities of pigment hints at
quantitative data produced by scientific rigour. However, the
installations comprise material and emotional cartographies mapping
human and nonhuman narratives, made to rebuild and strengthen bonds
of attachment, to push back against crisis and loss, and to care for
beauty and country. Rather than emerging from a purely factual,
scientific regimen, these collaborative works accentuate the
intersubjectivity of living and non-living entities entangled through
aesthetics, experiences and influences exchanged over time.
