Holding Ground
- Mar 25
- 5 min read
Updated: Mar 27
Gavin Wilson has curated his fourth exhibition for the S.H. Ervin Gallery on Observatory Hill in Sydney and once again it centres on our landscapes and the critical issues they face. He asked me to open the show, entitled Holding Ground, which I was delighted to do. I call Gav my "Bush Uncle" because we have this extended family connection that stretches back to when I was about 10 years old and we were all circling around our bush matriarch in her rambling country property.
Sheila Carroll came from the squatocracy in Binnaway on the black soil plains of Central NSW. She lived a wonderfully eccentric bohemian double life running a terrace house in Jersey Road with all kinds of creatives in residence including actors Michael Caton and Jack Thompson, who notoriously had twin girlfriends at the time. Sheila and my mother met when they were pushing prams up to All Saints church in Woollahra where her daughter and my sisters went to pre-school.
Once we were old enough to be put on a train at Central Station us kids would choof on up to Mudgee where Sheila would pick us up and take us out to her home near Coolah to spend our holidays. This is where I first began my connection with the bush - riding horses across the landscape and fishing for yabbies in the dams, feeling that sense of freedom and wellbeing that comes with being on the land. It’s a world away from city life with its deadlines and stresses and polluted air.
Sydney was my hometown up until 6 years ago when I moved to the Northern Rivers on Bundjalung country to be closer to nature. But for many years I worked in town as a climate activist with organisations like The Lock the Gate Alliance which strives to protect our country from coal and gas extraction. It wasn’t easy getting the city slickers to respond to issues facing farmers and wildlife but I was a bit ‘Town and Country’ so I could speak the lingo and tried to bridge the gap.
In 1988 I bought a property with some friends as a retreat from the city. It was near Sheila's next amazing historic sandstone home at Ilford between Lithgow and Mudgee. A few years later our land came under threat from a coal mining company. We started a local action group to protect it and the mountain that they wanted to drill under, which had 100 fresh water springs on it. I’m happy to say that the mine still hasn’t gone ahead because of the committed people that stood up for it.
That’s what Holding Ground looks like. And we do it for essential things like water, like country to grow food on, for its intrinsic value as wildlife habitat, and for a livable climate. Groups like 350.org have been trying to raise awareness about a healthy level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for decades. It’s 350 parts per million. We’re now at around 430ppm and the impact of this is being felt all around the world as the climate breaks down.
But these sorts of statistics have failed to change the way we operate as a species. And that’s where art comes in. It connects with us on a deeply emotional level. When we’re touched by a work of art, as I’m sure you’ll be tonight, we’re moved to think in a completely different way. That’s what the 17 artists in Holding Ground are doing. They want us to contemplate our relationship with the natural world and consider its plight. They want to stir our souls with the beauty of nature. We’ve become so disconnected. We need to get grounded.
Julie Paterson and her group of more than 500 collaborators have created the Menindee Memorial Loop in response to the apocalyptic fish kill that took place on the Baaka/Darling at Menindee in 2018/19. The two 14 metre sections on display here are just part of what will eventually be a 100 metre long giant loop made of small cotton offcuts, each lovingly stitched by hand.
Lae Oldmeadow also hand-stitches natural fibres, and uses a solar powered domestic sewing machine to suture nature into objects of veneration like the intricate Totems made of hoop pine bark and palm fibre on show in this exhibition.
Julie Harris paints the Gardens of Stone pagodas in a vertical format like a Chinese scroll, making us think about this ancient sacred landscape that is literally being undermined by coal mining. The sandstone pagodas are collapsing.
Four of the artists - John Wolseley, Janet Laurence, Idris Murphy and Jo Davenport - participated in the Earth Canvas project, responding to the heroic work being done on regenerative farms. They’re helping to spread the word about the ways in which we can bring back degraded country.
Angus Nivison describes his monumental painting as “a visual poem to the fragile web of life that is our environment, the very reason that life exists. We must hold onto what is left. We must keep “Holding Ground”.
Since September 2023, the Save Wallum action group at Brunswick Heads on has been Holding Ground to protect 30 hectares of High Ecological Value coastal heathland from the developers’ bulldozers. They’ve been using non-violent direct action like occupying scribbly gums that are hundreds of years old. They’ve also mounted a legal battle and are currently awaiting judgment in the Federal Court with a decision expected this month. Their struggle has been supported by photographers like Mac Maderski and Mark Seiffert whose work in this show brings the power of those old grandmother trees into the gallery space along with portraits of the exquisite creatures that call this place home.
Artists, poets and sages have long sung the praises of nature. The 12th century polymath Hildergard von Bingen* revered the ‘Veriditas’ - the greenness, that life-giving force of the planet’s majestic trees that soak up the sunlight and exude oxygen for our lungs to rejoice in.
Who doesn’t find solace sitting under a mighty tree that’s been shading generations for centuries? It’s that connection to country that comes naturally to humans, because we’re part of it. We are nature. Our better nature knows that. But we’ve been captured by a false God - the economy - which demands endless growth at all costs. We’re currently using 1.8 planet’s worth of resources every year. Where do we draw the line?
It’s easy to get depressed about the state of the natural world and what humans have done to it. But as Bob Brown says, the antidote is action. Bob has been urging us to stand up for nature for decades. In his recent book Defiance Bob writes: “Defiance is about taking action. It’s about defying the laws that serve those who are exploiting the planet and its people, while upholding the laws of nature” - the laws of our true nature.
I urge you to soak up these works and listen to the way they speak for country. You might even be inspired to join a group that’s holding some piece of ground near you. Stand up for the land because the land is part of you. We are all interconnected through this universal truth. Let’s uphold it!
O most noble Greenness, rooted in the sun,
shining forth in streaming splendor upon the wheel of Earth.
No earthly sense or being can comprehend you.
You are encircled by the very arms of Divine mysteries.
You are radiant like the red of dawn!
You glow like the incandescence of the sun!
Hildegard Von Bingen
