Hanging by a Thread exhibition at Alternating Currents Arts Space, High Street Windsor, February to March 2021.
The Volcanic Temperate Grasslands of Western Victoria are critically endangered. Salvage Ecology is an invitation to a conversation about that, and hopefully a provocation to action. The work features 200 seedlings of Poa Morissii, or velvety tussock grass, a species previously endemic to the region.
The term salvage ecology is borrowed from the concept of salvage anthropology, which describes the now discredited practice of anthropologists engaging with indigenous peoples to document them ‘for science’ before their inevitable demise.
In Salvage Ecology the negative image or shadow of the human figure has regenerated as indigenous grass, surrounded by 750 epoxy resin discs, with a palette drawn from the ‘heat map’ charts that describe the destruction of the ecology for the many government reports that document its demise.
Paul Duldig 