This work has evolved out of feelings of frustration and helplessness as I see the Australian landscape being ripped apart and gutted by coal and coal seam gas mining companies. Close to home, the Shenhua mining company, whilst having sold back part of its mining licence to the NSW government still threatens to exhume coal from our fertile foodbowl, the Liverpool Plains. Beautiful one day, dust bowl the next. The main cast of politicians and mining CEOs seem unstoppable. They are not leaders, they are our failures. This neckpiece is for a future tribal elder, a Chieftain, a survivor, who wears decayed and beaten precious ‘charms’, signifiers of an abundant past, a liveable world, small metal sarcophagi of precious relics, food corpses salvaged from the ruins that we created by dawdling and allowing this band of maniacs to stay in charge.
This work was a finalist in the JMGA-NSW Profile Award 2017.