‘It would be a nice place’

EFFA presents: ‘It would be a nice place’

10 March - 21 April 2022, SEVENTH Gallery

A free exhibition with works by Dean Cross and the Tributary Project.

Opening Night event on 9 March.

The venue is wheelchair accessible.

Presented by the Environmental Film Festival Australia in collaboration with Australian Environments On Screen and SEVENTH Gallery

What’s happening.

‘It would be a nice place’ explores what it means to clean up Australia from within the colonial project. Working through water, these works explore the entanglements of violence and temporalities that saturate the landscape—both real and reimagined. Unmooring ideas around aquatic flows as naturally cleansing, they ask us instead: when the water rises, who feels the flood?

The exhibition features media works by Dean Cross and Tributary Project (Geoff Robinson, Ying-Lan Dann, Saskia Schut, Benjamin Woods). Worimi artist Dean Cross’s Pauline (A Portrait) revisits the Toowoomba floods as a metaphor for the colonial project. Silurian Geology speaks to a specific moment within and in connection to the lower Moonee Ponds Creek tributary system, where the concreted channel meets a siltstone rock face from the Silurian geologic period.

Tributary Project is supported by the City of Melbourne Arts Grants program, Bus Projects, and Composite.

Works

Paulie (A Portrait) | What does normalisation look like? Can it be felt like a gentle tingle across your face on a foggy morning? Or does it smell like the rank breath of that teacher who leans in too close and tries too hard to be liked by everyone? In truth it is probably closer to the defeat one feels when the person sitting next to you on the aeroplane unashamedly colonises the arm rest (do you remember air travel?) and you concede to hours of uncomfortable frustration.  As a child I remember asking an Elder why politicians are allowed to lie but I am not – I am still waiting for a decent answer.  Somewhere a tap is broken. One reservoir is draining whilst another fills to the brim. Our old people built canoes, but I am forgetting how to swim. | Dean Cross was born and raised on Ngunnawal/Ngambri Country and is of Worimi descent. He is a transdisciplinary artist primarily working across installation, sculpture and photography.

Silurian Geology | This is a part of a series of audio/video artworks in conjunction with the collaborative research project Tributary Project by Geoff Robinson, Ying-Lan Dann, Saskia Schut, and Benjamin Woods. Tributary Project engages with the redirected, hidden and remnant creek tributaries of inner northwest Narrm/Melbourne on Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Country.  Silurian Geology speaks to a specific moment within and in connection to the lower Moonee Ponds Creek tributary system, where the concreted channel meets a siltstone rock face from the Silurian geologic period. Tributary Project is currently showing online and as an exhibition at Composite 1 March to 2 April 2022.  This project acknowledges the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung people as the custodians of the land and waterways in which this project was made and pay respects to their Elders, past, present and emerging. Thank you to Aunty Julieanne Axford and Aunty Gail Smith and the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Cultural Heritage Aboriginal Corporation for their insights and consultation on the project.  | Tributary Project is supported by the City of Melbourne Arts Grants program, Bus Projects, and Composite.

Thanks.

The Environmental Film Festival Australia is a 100% volunteer-run festival. Thank you to everyone who has tirelessly worked behind-the-scenes to bring our first visual arts exhibition together.

Arts Curatorial Team | Ian Ramirez, Julia Flaster, Olive Gilbert, Taylor Mitchell

Festival Directors | Charlie Macfarlane, Freyja Gillard

Promotion | Darren Saffin

Thanks to Australian Environments on Screen.

Presented by.