Exhibition Feature: WATER presence & absence

WATER presence & absence

A Q&A with Curator Rilka Oakley and WATER artists Jo Clancy, Sue Healey and Leanne Tobin.

Jo Clancy & Wagana Dancers

Rilka Oakley: What is your interest in the theme of WATER and what is your dance/film about? Is there a particular story you are telling?

Jo Clancy: Yindyang Bila is slow river in Wiradjuri language. My great grandmother was a Bogan River Wiradjuri woman. She was born to the river, she was removed from the river, she worked on hands and knees scrubbing floors with water from the river. Her song and dance comes to me from the river. Yindyang Bila is for her.

Rilka Oakley: Can you tell us about your connection to the locations where you created this work?

Jo Clancy: I travelled to the Bogan River in Peak Hill and to Ganguddy near Rylstone with my cousin Tammi Gissell and my kinship daughter Shana O’Brien to Winhangadurinya (listen deeply, meditate, connect and reflect) with the Songlines that travel through these waters and Country. We shared song and dance with women and girls in each community and we were guided by Spirit to begin piecing the work together.

Sue Healey and Richard joined us in each location to witness some of the making, to observe the Corroborees and to meet Country. Sue listened, watched and gently guided our Wagana to meet the camera.

Rilka Oakley: How does the collaboration process work for both of you and have you collaborated before? What are both of your roles in this project?

Jo Clancy: I have always admired Sue’s work and was fortunate to collaborate with her on a youth dance project called Meeting Place earlier this year. Her understanding, her experience and her relationship with dance, coupled with her beautiful aesthetic and knowledge of film making and performance installation has been a privilege to entrust Yindyang Bila with.

Sue Healey: My role has been to capture the movement of the three women, in the very special locations of Bogan River and Ganguddy, and render these performances into a digital space. My intention is always to honour the quality of the live action and find ways to allow it to exist in the exhibition space, so that more people can experience its message, beyond the performance. It has been a privilege to witness the song and dance within these very powerful spaces.

Leanne Tobin

Rilka Oakley: How is your practice related to water and water health?

Leanne Tobin: Telling the story of the eel’s (Burra) lifecycle through my artwork, allows audiences to understand these migratory cycles and the importance of clean water. My art practice is strongly linked with the need to raise awareness of our role as custodians. The old wisdoms of the Traditional Custodians hold relevance, even more so today, as we struggle with floods, fires, droughts, and poisoned waterways. The significance of recognising seasonal changes in advance, was knowledge used to live safely in the natural environment, but this was thwarted by the arrival of the colonisers.

The use of glass as a medium was intentional, harking back to its river-sand origins. The reflections and rippling shadows of the hand-blown glass eels in The Call of Ngura, emulate water but are also a metaphor for the ongoing struggle the Dharug have endured. The adaption to new environs is seen in the need for our people to ‘go with the flow’, to bend with the current and not resist. Enduring smallpox (galgala), massacres and subjection, teetering on the verge of extinction, the Dharug have managed to adapt.

Paying homage to the phenomenal eel itself, the work also acknowledges the amazing qualities of the eel. Within their life cycle, Burra move between saltwater and freshwater: they can climb dams, creep across land, and undergo extreme physical transformations.

LEANNE TOBIN Ngalawan – We Live, We Remain: The Call of Ngura (Country) (detail), 2022, blown glass. Courtesy the artist.

Made in collaboration with glass workers Ben and Kathy Edols.

Commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney with generous support from Create NSW.