Openings 1. Eureka Rising 2. Erosions Exhibition

Openings 1. Eureka Rising Sunday 28th 4 pm Welcome to Country and Festival 2. Erosions Exhibition Monday 29th 8 pm Opening of Erosions in Gallery Space at Grainery Lane Theatre 34 Doveton St BALLARAT VIC

Emu eggs and Sand Mining by Geoff Buchan, Maroota

Openings 1. Eureka Rising Sunday 28th 4 pm Welcome to Country and Festival. Sound - body toning and more.

2. Erosions Exhibition Monday 29th 8 pm Opening of Erosions in Gallery Space. Also see http://www.connettivo.net/ Plexus Virtual Gallery

Programs at Grainery Entrance

Emu guarding a clutch of eggs - and sand miners playing god with the fertility of Maroota (Geoff Buchan, Australia)
This image, "emu guarding a clutch of eggs - and sand miners playing god with the fertility of Maroota", is a juggling of painted thoughts about - Art, Law and Planning.
It is triggered over 25 years of noticing the erosion of a rock engraving showing an emu guarding a clutch of eggs. Then around the time of the Sydney Olympics, authorities, unbeknown to traditional owners, used power tools to highlight galleries of rock art images so that they could be better photographed.

The painting depicts this flightless bird as hanging on by a claw as sand mining, sanctioned by the State, operates around it. The intrinsic fertile meaning of this shared media source of another time, has been recently diminished in the adversarial words of a modern court of law.

Aboriginal Law has tacit meaning in the images themselves and seems less so in the sequences of words written.
Art - the first juggled painted thoughts are about the role of artists across time.
Law - the second is about continuing colonization in reference to a local situation with International Law impinging on Customary Law, in turn affecting the potency of local community .
Planning - concerns adherence to the Precautionary Principle, - are we creating a future worth belonging to?
The painting is about the erosion of fertility. Erosion in this case is exacerbated by the limited imaginings of landscape. It is evident in the binary argument of lawyers. The haste to win a case elevates a single egg scenario - there is a hesitatancy to articulate the 'whole' or consider a clutch of issues. The State argues a singular perspective of mental mining geometry (diagonals in the image) which erodes complex realities of the natural tapestry of heritage richness. The precautionary principle is about guarding the richness, - being mindful of the richness in a clutch of eggs.

To show a new phase a quasi 'touch up' painting exercise was embarked upon, re-working a completed picture to illustrate the impact of sand miners playing "God" with the cultural and environmental fertility of the Maroota Plateau. The re-working was done for a case before the NSW Land and Environment Court.

The Maroota Plateau is being mined. Sand is extracted from major high aquifers. These are sources of pure spring water that cascade in times of drought from an elevated ancient river bed formed on the plateau. The painting is an attempt to shift the prevailing single egg line of argument to have consideration made for embracing a clutch of perspectives.