BORDERLIFE

Julia Boyd, Rachael Freeman, Rose Montebello, Tess Stewart-Moore, r e a

Curated by Yolande Norris

July 3rd - August 15th 2009 | CCAS Goman

Since the earliest days of white settlement in Australia, the landscape represented hardship and mystery, fear and awe. With no regard for the existence Indigenous Australians had taken over 40,000 years to perfect, the settlers saw a wilderness to be dominated and ‘civilised’, an awful distance to be reconciled, and a misguided hope of replicating something of the old countries they’d left behind. Modern times find little changed. The built environments of metropolitan Australia offer a promise of safety and security -the ‘easy life’. The citizen, sealed within his air-conditioned high rise apartment, is oblivious to the realities of his own vulnerability in what remains our most awkward relationship with one of the world’s most unforgiving environments.

The city is an illusion of triumph and a symbol of dominance, yet Mother Nature is ever-present, strange and unpredictable. Soaring temperatures, freak storms, drought, fire and flood are continual reminders of how delicately we balance at the very edge of the world, where no amount of concrete and asphalt will alter the fact that man’s place will be contested until the very end. Borderlife explores this uneasy association, highlighting an endless struggle for dominance over nature and the struggle for life within it. (Yolande Norris, 2009)

Image: Rose Montebello, Night Game, 2009, mixed media image assemblage