Exhibition: Gallery 152, Ballardong/York Western Australia
Collaboration with: Jayden Boundary, Billie Claire Bushby, Donna Franklin
Photo: Claire Billie Bushby
I was invited to create an accompanying soundscape for this sculptural piece, combining field recordings around the Moodjar / WA Christmas Tree (Nuytsia floribunda) at Whiteman Park, and interviews with Jayden Boundary and children.
A highly sacred tree in Noongar culture where ancestors rest, this sculpture acts as an allegory of transformation and resilience.
Found across the State from the South-West to York, chosen as a symbol of strength, this hemi-parasite thrives in extreme temperatures. Using hydraulic engineering its root ‘nodules’ (haustorium) take xylem water and nutrients from other plants. It even disrupts telephone lines with its sickle-like cutting device. It evolved 40-million-year-ago and is often the last tree standing on cleared land.
Copper, glass, and fungi, as elements from the earth, are in a process of constant change. Either, through the passage of time, by fire, as conductors, or from the pull of gravity. Trametes versicolor fungi provides an alternate healing remedy to support the immune system. While Metarhizium fungi requires a host body to survive. These living beings grow, decay, exhale and renew inside glass vessels.
Life around the tree is recorded by sound artist Sze Tsang. Manipulating frequencies, they provide an experience of sound from a perspective beyond human knowledge. Within this soundscape of Deep Time, Jayden Boundry, a proud Whadjuk Ballardong Noongar maarman wer Badimaya Yamatji from Ngalak Nidja speaks and plays didgeridoo, accompanied by the voices of various community reflecting on their connection to the natural world.
The tree breathes, moves, senses, knows, and remembers.