Blue and green: Eyes open IV (‘Amor vincit omnia’ - a song of the Abrolhos Islands). 

​

Green: Seawater (Remembering William Dampier, hydrographer), glass bottled water from Tarcoola Beach, Indian Ocean.

​

Installation of an acrylic diptych on canvas (each 25.5cm x 25.5cm) alongside a green glass bottle of sea water.

​

Blue and green the colours of the ocean show the installation’s theme of the sea, its debris and environmental status, with questions of a sustainable future.

​

Exploring colour and an assemblage of objects from past and present eras, a still life of broken glass from the Abrolhos Islands is represented in one painting, and, an ointment jar, spices and mortar along with the human cranium and fragment of a murdered victim from the shipwreck Batavia in the Geraldton Museum in the other painting. Sounds implied by the sheet music (from a home in Geraldton) link oceans, cultures, places, and histories.

​

Voyaging and art traditions come to mind, specifically from the 1600s and the time of the VOC retourship Batavia’s voyage to south East Asia on an alternative trade route to avoid travelling overland via the region controlled by the Ottoman Empire. ‘Glass’ is the linking element from Turkey to the midwest coast in Australia, its past and present histories, and the consumption of water / wine depicted in an allegorical still life by Torrentius from 1614 held in Netherland’s Rijksmuseum that is discussed in an essay by Simon Leys, The wreck of the Batavia, 2005. The modern use and disposal of glass and plastics are having an impact on global oceanic hydrographies.

​

The Batavia was shipwrecked on the west coast of the 'great southland', 1629, with its terrible story that eventuated. See http://museum.wa.gov.au/research/research-areas/maritime-archaeology/batavia-cape-inscription/batavia

​

Future Earth – Members Exhibition, ACDC Arts & Cultural Development Council of Geraldton, 189 Marine Terrace Geraldton, Western Australia 6530 - 10 August 2017