FRONT BEACH BACK BEACH. Mornington Peninsula. Curated by David Cross. Presented by Public Art Commission (PAC) and Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery
materials: crushed grey granite, crushed limestone, basalt rocks, radiata pine construction timber, frozen seawater, frozen brewed chicory, frozen tap water, soil, chicory plants, mushroom spawn
Upon the knoll above Shoreham beach on the Mornington Peninsula is a small plantation of conifers known as ‘The Pines’. This verdant and slightly fantastical forest has a European sensibility not unlike a setting from an Enid Blyton story replete with fungi and meandering paths. nipaluna/Hobart-based artist Lucy Bleach first encountered this site while researching the legacy of the Mornington Peninsula chicory industry, a ‘value adding’ agricultural crop with associated rammed earth drying kilns that stand as monuments over a transformed landscape. Captivated by the site’s strangeness, its curious features and uncertain purpose wedged between Westernport Bay and native vegetation, The Pines conjured a landscape to be worked with.
As an artist fascinated by natural systems and the effect of entropy on material forms, Bleach has sought to build a dialogue between local and introduced organic materials through the insertion of a series of charismatic sculptural interventions. A number of constructions have been delicately choreographed within the landscape, instigating encounters with processes which are simultaneously growing, shifting and breaking down. There are modes of porosity between constructions and landscape, and the disparate temporal registers at play imply that nothing is still.
‘Longshore drift’ is a geological process that contributes towards the formation, transformation and reformation of a range of depositional landforms in Westernport Bay. on this shore follows the formal and conceptual logic of this process. The artist’s intervention, part installation, part earthwork is uncanny, asking us to experience and reflect on the compelling incongruity of human modified transitional landscapes such as The Pines.
David Cross, curator.
Acknowledgements:
The artist acknowledges and pays respect to the elders, families and ancestors of the Bunarong/BoonWurrung people, who are the custodians of Country on which the installation has been sited.
The work has been realised through the generous support from the following people and organisations: Shoreham Foreshore Committee; the Griffith family; Rammed Earth Victoria; Adam Afiff; Peninsula Meats freezer storage; Peninsula Furniture Frames; Julie Bennett Montalto Produce Manager; David Cross, Cameron Bishop, Danny Lacy and the Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery.
lucybleach.com.au 