earthspoke

Curatorial Statement: The first stage of an archaeological investigation of the Kerry Lodge convict site, just south of Launceston was held in March 2015. As the archaeologists and volunteers gradually removed layers of earth and stone to reveal the wall and floor of a ruined building, the artists were there as well.

Earthspoke is an exploration of how the speculative and visual process of art making can speak to the interpretation of material history. In these works, the artists are fascinated with the texture and detail revealed in the uncovered earth, and the intimacy and attentiveness of the labour involved in this process. Here echoes emerge of the unfree labour of convicts, embodied experiences recorded through traces. Sensitivity to time, both durational and ephemeral, is important here.

Gradually, the lines of a building emerge. These lines, initially identified through a knack of the eye, are framed by the rigid demarcation of surveying and measuring tools, picked out by string and stakes. But the lines are not the story. Their clarity only marks out a space for imagining, envisioning, and reshaping. We provide forms for the earth to speak.