RE-FILL

RE-FILL features fragments of broken glass bottles and jars collected over a long period from the walking tracks along the Merri Creek in Melbourne’s North. This exhibition is part of a larger project exploring the relationship between human and geological histories, between the discourses of Science and of Art, and between various cultural stakeholders including the original indigenous communities of the Merri Creek. The work in this exhibition appraises the glass pieces and the soil through which they have travelled as equal entities. The conceptual framing for this project is ‘duologue’, defined as ‘two discourses talking at or through each other, or perhaps despite each other’ in a dialectic process that generates new discursive material. The artwork examines ‘duology’ in relations between the sciences of vision and of soil. The theme of ‘broken stereography’ is referenced in two works that exploit the difference between what each eye sees in binocular visual perception. ‘Merri Creek Mud’ and ‘Kanto [Tokyo] Loam’ share a volcanic history and the vicissitudes of human industry. In RE-FILL, broken glass functions as impoverished lenses through which to observe what is happening to the topsoil on which sustainable planetary life depends.