Peta Clancy

My installation  birrarung ba brungergalk for The Soils Project explores the confluence where brungergalk meets the birrarung on Wurundjeri Country in Healesville. Wurundjeri Traditional Custodian Brooke Wandin writes that brungergalk is the Woiwurrung name for Watts River and means rotten logs. Since colonisation the water flowing through brungergalk has been perceived as a resource and a commodity. The confluence where the two waterways meet is where Wurundjeri Traditional Custodians have been visiting and spending time for thousands of years. Since invasion, significant sites such as these have become inaccessible for Traditional Custodians because much of the Country is in private hands. Through my works, I hope to contribute to conversation about the accessibility of waterways and Country for Traditional Custodians.

The wallpaper print in the installation is a reproduction of a hand-coloured photograph by Nicholas Caire titled Junction, Yarra and Watts River (National Gallery of Victoria) which depicts the confluence around 1880. This photograph was used to create a postcard view of the landscape that offered a colonialist and objectified perspective. Installed over the wallpaper print are photographic prints of the confluence which I have created using a performative process that involves returning to Country with photographs I have previously taken at the same location. I then return to show Country the photographs, cut into the prints, and rephotograph the photographs at the same location. The photographs feature multiple views of Country to explore multiple timeframes, histories and perspectives.

In Australia, historical photographs of landscape/place/Country, frame Country as an object to capture or obtain. Country is depicted through an extractive and resource driven lens. I am interested in exploring other ways of knowing Country through photography. My photographs will form a visual record of the confluence for future reference for Wurundjeri Traditional Custodians. I would like to thank Wurundjeri Traditional Custodians for their generosity in enabling me to take these photographs on Wurundjeri Country.

The Soils Project 5 August – 12 November 2023, brings together 13 practitioners and collectives from Australia, the Netherlands and Indonesia to explore the complex and diverse relationships between environmental change and colonisation.