The Edge

Pie Bolton is a contemporary artist working on Boon Wurrung country in Narrm (Melbourne), Australia. Geology is the driving force in her process-based practice as she considers the laying down of sediments over deep geological time, the continuous slow flow of rocks, catastrophic earth events and properties like gravity. Her practice is multi-layered, a combination of writing, thinking, reading, experimentation and making. She writes briefs and imposes her own deadlines. Her ideas fall philosophically into new materialism, the agency of matter and the flattening of anthropocentric hierarchies.

She researches correlations between geologic and ceramic processes and often dissects her work by cutting with concrete saws and grinders to inspect the interior. She reveals what is usually hidden, highlighting the preciousness of the earth and the care we should be taking of it. Her practice is full of continued conversations and collaborations with materials, combined with a constant attentiveness to their, and her own, capacities and tendencies. It is these collaborations which form the bedrock of her practice, a solid base where the process is more considered than the outcome. Bolton’s lived experience - childhood memories of place, work as a geologist, and as an artist - reveals a deep connection with the earth and underpins the authenticity of her practice.

Bolton has been the recipient of a Creative Victoria Grant and an RMIT University Travel Research Grant. In 2015 she undertook a residency at The Pottery Workshop, Jingdezhen, China. She has articles published in Garland Magazine and The Journal of Australian Ceramics.

Tertiary studies in both art and science (geology), and her endless quest for knowledge have resulted in a unique, authoritative practice. She has tertiary qualifications in ceramics and has completed an MFA at RMIT University, Melbourne. She was employed professionally as a Ceramic Technician, heading up the workshops at Holmesglen TAFE and RMIT University for more than a decade.

In 2019 Bolton founded The Kiln Room, a unique ceramic resource in Melbourne. The Kiln Room is a fully equipped ceramic studio, growing in facilities and services as required by the ceramic community with intent to build connections between artists. Aims are to promote the sharing of knowledge and to embody the continued generosity of spirit of ceramicists and potters. The Kiln Room offers a specialist ceramic firing service, technical expertise, mentorship, installation consultancy, artist studios and residency program.

www.piebolton.com
www.thekilnroom.com

Alice’s practice exposes the multifaceted, ever-changing and (most importantly) constructed nature of our personal and cultural identities. Utilising photography, ready-made materials and site-specific installation, Alice visualises the complexities involved in collectively living on colonised land. She creates images that layer both past and present Australian histories, using a combination of past (analogue) and present (digital) photographic techniques.

Alice’s work has been exhibited across Australia and internationally including solo exhibitions at Bus Projects (Melbourne), Cut Thumb Gallery (Brisbane), Seventh Gallery (Melbourne) and group exhibitions at Pingyao Photography Festival (China), Perth Centre for Photography and Queensland Centre for Photography. Alice has been an artist-in-residence at AARK in Korpo, Finland and the IAM in Berlin, Germany.

Papua New Guinean born artist and Master Weaver Vicki Kinai is highly recognized for Practicing ‘Bilum Weaving’ a traditional weaving skill learnt from her grandmother, mother and aunties at an early age.

She is currently a community cultural ambassador receiving a number of awards from Multicultural Arts Victoria in recognition for her contributions to community as a mentor, facilitator and sharing her culture and connecting diverse communities across Australia and overseas.

She was also the recipient of the Pacific Contemporary Arts Festival awards In collaboration with other local and international artists, her artwork is being exhibited throughout Victoria. She has adapted the weaving technique to create wearable art and installations with other local and international artists.

Every piece I create tells a story, that connects me to people, place and land of Australia or my birthplace of PNG. Every creation has relevance and connection. ….

She facilitates weaving, art/craft with cultural story telling sessions for all ages at schools, community centres, libraries and events.

FB page “Vicki Kinai’s Bilum Community”.

Rebecca Mayo lectures at the School of Art & Design, Australian National University. She is interested in how an art practice built around process, repetition and labour can produce artworks that manifest through—and reveal—practices of care. She uses site- and species-specific plant-dye to make visible interdependencies between plants and people, and the resulting relations of reciprocal care. Her work A cure for plant blindness, was exhibited at CLIMATE CARE: Reimagining Shared Planetary Futures, at the Museum of Applied Arts (MAK), during the Vienna Biennale for Change, 2021.

rebeccamayo.com

In a series of seven planters presented at Melton Botanic Garden, BIG SOIL instigates a discussion about cars, fuel, and plants through public art. 

The City of Melton relies heavily on cars for access to and through the area for education, recreation, work, and health services, with networks of freeways and highways providing essential access to the municipality.  Nearby is the Calder Park Raceway, where cars in all their forms are raced and admired. 

Each planter has been created with an oil drum, modified, mobilised and decorated to house plant life.  This direct reference to oil-based fuels alongside the biofuel industry emphasises the crucial transition from fossil fuels and gas for the survival of organisms on planet Earth and the critical role of plants.

Using a range of Australian native plants emphasises the function plants can play in this transition and the essential properties they offer society, such as food, fibre, construction, and medicine.  Referencing Bruno La Tour’s ‘critical zone’ (LaTour, 2014) the narrow but liveable and productive soil forms the Earth's crust; the plants within each drum act as 'world builders' (Myers, 2018).  Within this art installation, the photosynthesising plants turn sunlight and air into energy for themselves and all creatures.  In tandem with bacteria and microorganisms, the selected plants provide habitats and perform soil remediation. The plants are ‘hyperaccumulators’ in this process, meaning they absorb heavy metals from the earth, extracting pollutants from water and soil by storing them in their leaves, roots, and stems.

Hesterman’s temporary public artwork is playful and optimistic, accentuating car culture and celebrating plants as a way for the future.

BIG SOIL will be at Melton Botanical Garden (Amphitheatre) from April 20 – July 9, 2023.

40 Lakewood Boulevard, Melton Vic 3337

_{Artwork Credits: Heather Hesterman. BIG SOIL. recycled oil drums, wheels, paint, soil, scoria, Australian native plants (various). Melton Botanic Garden, 2023.
Production team: Kieran Meegan, Mitch R Signs. In partnership with the Friends of the Melton Botanic Garden.
Images courtesy of the artist.}

BIG SOIL Artist Talk/ Garden Tour Melton Botanic Garden 30 April 2023.
Artist: Heather Hesterman & President of the Melton Botanic Garden: John Bentley

Download a copy of the BIG SOIL TALK transcript(PDF, 104KB)

Transcript:

Heather Hesterman

"I want to acknowledge that we are gathered and standing on the stolen lands of First Nations people, whose culture and practices are some of the oldest living continuous cultures on earth. I’d like to pay respects to the Bunurong, Wurundjeri and Wadawurrung peoples within the Melton City Regions. This land is unceded, and I am the direct beneficiary of settler and white colonial actions. The lands around us, the trees and the remaining less than 1 % of native grasslands in Victoria(Association) were managed by Indigenous knowledges, knowledge that relates to specific plants species, such as cultivating Murnong, the Yam daisy tubers for food and implementing low-temperature mosaic fire burning methods that aimed to assist hunting animals as well as reinvigorating parts of land. This is part of Indigenous being, of connections to, with and looking after Country (Pascoe, 2018).

Indigenous Australians were displaced from Country due to settler activities, with Frontier Wars, slavery and disease killing thousands and thousands of people. Carving up land through drawing maps is one contributing factor among many acts that resulted in Indigenous dispossession. Implementing fences, which divided land, also affected Indigenous peoples, as the walking routes and songlines, known for eternity were interrupted (Pascoe, 2018). Mapping territories and fencing land secures new ownerships, determining who has the right to access and who is excluded.

The City of Melton, like many municipalities on the fringe of the growing city of Melbourne, has both settler, agriculture and farming history as well as growing construction, housing estates, and retail development for its growing population. The current population of Melton is 199,000, with the area of Rockbank, at Mt Cotterell, being the highest growing area in Australia (Melton, 2022). This leads me to discuss the current exhibition, The Edge presented by the City of Melton that explores in part, the carving up of land into housing developments reducing grassy plains.

As quoted on Melton’s website (Melton, 2023):

This exhibition explores the precarious but persistent state of nature at the edge of urban growth. Centring the experiences of residents in a city preoccupied with rapid land development, artists negotiate the complex relationship between humans and land on the ‘green edge’.

Focusing on three critical local issues: our fragile volcanic plains, the local impacts of climate change and the protection of our waterways, artworks explore these themes through sculpture, photography, text, weaving, printmaking, installation and public art.

The City of Melton commissioned my project BIG SOIL and it is part of an exhibition at CS Gallery, in Caroline Springs titled: The Edge with artworks by Aunty Viccki Kurnai, Pie Bolton, Alice Duncan, Rebecca Mayo, Noah Thorley and myself.

What is exciting about this project for me is that there is a return to semi-familiar spaces, as until the age of 10years, I lived in a rented old house at the end of Doherty’s Road at Mt. Cotterell surrounded by farmland with expansive vistas and horizons. Coupled with this fact is that I have always hoped someday to create something to be installed or to organise a walk/experience in a Botanic Gardens. So, when the curatorial team approached me to be a part of The Edge and work in partnership with the Friends of the Melton Botanic Garden, I was thrilled.

I have a multi-disciplinary practice that includes print, installation, performance, video and community involvement in combination with landscape design, education and research. I work casually in the School of Art at RMIT University and am currently undertaking a PhD at The University of Tasmania aiming to improve ‘human-plant’ relations. My art projects occur within gallery spaces and also in the public realm.

Having said I would love to be a part of this project; the challenge and concern was what would I do? I visited the Melton Botanic Gardens last year to consider the site and gather information. As an artist, part of my developmental process is to embrace the uncertainty that eventually unfolds into degrees of certainty as a project progresses. Every art project is different; there are constraints, various stakeholders, including myself and aspects to be discussed and negotiated with forms to create and fabricate. This uncertainty is necessary, but in my and many other artists’ practices, who work with various mediums, there are decisions as to what materials are used in each instance. For me, I trust the whole process of simply ‘turning up’ to a site and not knowing what, if anything, will arise in the site or be revealed in the space, but I remain open and receptive to any possibility once I have my feet on the ground.

Except for this project, the journey starts immediately from my suburban home by jumping into my car. A car is a machine on wheels that requires human interaction, and I am guilty of loving driving. This includes the freedom of journeying, planning a drive or road trip, and all the in-between stages that result in reaching a destination.

I think this love of cars stems from my childhood, living on the farm; the car provides a connection to other places. The journey to and from the farm to the nearby town of Werribee and Primary School was about 19 km one way by car or school bus. As a little child, I was acutely aware of several dips along Doherty’s Road that would become flowing floodways and the car having to traverse without getting stuck or swept away. When my family moved to Perth in Western Australia, cars and utes were vital to travel long distances. Moving back to the eastern States in my early twenties provided a revelation as driving here, towns in Victoria seemed comparatively close rather than hundreds of km away.

Walking around the vast site that is the Melton Botanic Garden, I noticed the sounds of cars drifting from the Western Freeway to the South of the gardens. I arrived at the site via the Melton Highway, from a dense housing area through paddocks then entering housing and industrials sites to my destination. UK author and academic Timothy Morton suggests that Humans don’t mean to damage the planet; however, we operate automatically; that we are like zombies. So, when billions of us start our engines each day, we are contributing to the 6th Mass extinction (Morton, 2018) with car exhaust fumes emitting Carbon dioxide and other unseen chemicals into the atmosphere.

These other chemicals include carbon monoxide, benzene, nitrogen, particle matter- in the form of soot, hydrocarbons, and heavy metals. These toxins cause smog, negatively impacting humans, and absorbed through food, skin, inhalation, and drinking contaminated water. Effects on the human include dizziness, headaches, increased cancer rates, heart and lung disease, damage to internal organs, asthma and other breathing problems.(Victoria, 2011) Fumes from the car’s exhaust can be invisible or incredibly visible, like SMOG. The term SMOG coined in the 1900s is a mixture of smoke from burning coal, wood fires, and fog,(Britannica, 2023) although now the term is synonymous with car pollution. Motor vehicles are regarded as the primary source of air pollution globally.(Shepards)

Heavy metals are released through car wires, alloys, tyres and pipes in the engine onto the roadside surroundings becoming part of urban road dust, swept into the air or transported into stormwater networks. These include Iron, Cadmium, Lead, Copper, Chromium, Nickel, Zinc, Arsenic, Mercury, Selenium and Magnesium.(Stancic, 2022) Once on the road, these heavy metals are non-degradable and bioaccumulate - meaning they are transferred up the food chain, and are toxic to animal health, with fish and other aquatic organisms suffering as motor oil, grease and automatic fluids leak from exhausts, pipes and car undercarriages.(Shepards)

Although heavy metals occur naturally, human activities release huge quantities disrupting natural processes and ecological balances. Fuel-burning contributes to an accumulation of gases in the atmosphere. As a result, we have increased global temperatures, melting of the polar caps, releasing methane etc, in what we are experiencing as global climate change.

BIG SOIL or BIGS OIL, as John calls my artwork, playfully attends to the word slippery-ness of oil and soil. Fossil fuels are formed by the layering of mainly plants and organisms, compressed and heated over millions of years to create oil, coal and natural gas, collectively known as fossil fuels. Most cars, trucks, buses and motorbikes run on refined oil. We are literally to borrow musician David Byrne’s lyrics, “burning down the house”(Heads, 1983).

BIG SOIL references the oil industry’s power and large organisations. The oil drums in my artwork were sourced from the Automotive industry, from mechanics and re-fabricated by Kieran Meegan into mobile planters. The wheels reference the car culture, with the drums complete with hot-rod flames emerging from the base of each oil drum, indicating both a fast vehicle and rings of fire; fuel being burnt. Many of the local drag racing cars at the nearby Calder Park Raceway have hotted up engines, elaborate paint-work, and fire out flames from both exhaust pipes and engines.

BIG OIL has dominated and operated hand in glove with governments, it is synonymous with capitalist wealth and coercion. In contrast, BIG SOIL refers partly to the thin but valuable ‘critical zone’(LaTour, 2014) that wraps around the world, as scientist and theorist Bruno Latour call it, that sustains life, for without soil, terrestrial life would cease to exist. My project aims to accentuate the importance of soil, as organic and inorganic matter, as a substance; it supports many plants, who, as ‘world-builders’(Myers,2018), turning light and air into energy through the process of photosynthesis. Soil is full of life; the bacteria, microbes, and fungi provide plants with coatings on roots that protect adventurous roots whilst the very fine mychorizzal hair-like structures of the fungi extend forming vast networks connecting plants, enabling nutrient exchanges, in tandem with bacteria fixing atmospheric nitrogen and increasing nutrient uptake (Simard, 2021) In return, as fungi cannot photosynthesise, the plants provide valuable sugars and habitats.

Plants are unique species in their forms, colours, and textures; they sustain all life. They are various and magnificent- living as tall trees, such Mountain Ash (Eucalyptus regans) growing in the Otway Forest, or as single-celled organisms providing oxygen in the oceans(Chisholm, 2018) or the zinnia plant flowering on the International Space Station; plants are truly amazing species. Never underestimate plants; they have intelligence, instincts, memory and knowledges that we are just learning about. Placing plants as part of art in the Botanical

John,

it’s not botanical but botanic gardens.

Heather,

Oh right, thanks John. So, bringing plants to the Melton Botanic Garden may seem like ‘bringing coals to Newcastle’- pardon the fossil fuel pun, however, my thoughts here were to present a range of species to highlight their exceptionalism.

I have selected several Australian native plant species that have shown capacity in recent science experiments to remove heavy metals from soil. These remedial plants are called ‘hyperaccumulators’(Victoria, 2011), storing the metals in their stems, roots and leaves. They are found naturally growing in soils with heavy metals and can cope with the high metal content. Hyperaccumulators are often rare species of plants growing in very particular sites, and are targeted as indicators for potential metal deposits to be mined whilst also selected for mining remediation (Funnell, 2021). Plants here, in this instance, are doing the heavy lifting for humans.

Hyperaccumulator species mentioned in a 2013 study(Mok et al., 2013) include Australian native plants; Grevillea robusta Silky Oak, the Sugar Gum, Eucalyptus cladocalyx nana, Kangaroo grass Themeda triandra and Poa species that are included in the BIG SOIL project. Ficinia nodosa, Knobby rush, for example is a native plant species able to tolerate water, and dry spells. It is included in retrofitted swales with other plant species in the City of Yarra to filtrate and slow down stormwater before it flows into local creeks (Yarra, 2016). Other species, such as Backhousia citriodora, Lemon myrtle, the Spiny saltbush, Rhagodia spinescens, Pale Flax-lily, Dianella longifolia and Lilly Pilly, Syzygium smithii have Indigenous usages, in weaving and bush foods. Other species in the drums have been selected for their hardiness, complementing the Mediterranean garden surrounding this area, and all are Australian native plants. At the end of this project, as part of my practice, these plants will be gifted to humans, finding a ‘Forever’ home.

To conclude, my art practice tries to create opportunities for engagement, to create better ‘human-plant relations’, for people to slow down and notice plants, to acknowledge our indebtedness and entanglement with the photosynthesising ones. I want people to develop chlorophilia- a love for plants.

I want to thank specifically Vivian Cooper for her vision and generosity, Laura Kolaric, Rebecca Hickey and Autumn Tansey from Melton’s Arts and Culture Team, Kieran Meegan and Mitch R Signs for fabrication and painting, John Bentley, the President of the Friends of Melton Botanic Garden who has come on this journey with me and to my friends and family, who have provided support as this project took various twists and turns to come into being. I want to thank everyone here who has journeyed, especially, I imagine by car, to hear my artist talk and visit the fabulous gardens. So, thank you to you all."

References.

ASSOCIATION, V. N. P. Urban Sprawl: Critically endangered grassland ecosystems are threatened by urban sprawl. Carlton, Melbourne: VNPA.

BRITANNICA, T. E. O. 2023. smog. Britannica.

CHISHOLM, P. 2018. The tiny creature that secretly powers the planet. TED. How ‘agromining’- farming plants that contain metal- could help power the future, 2021. Directed by FUNNELL, A. Australia.

HEADS, T. 1983. Speaking in Tongues. NYC: Rhino/Warner Records.

LATOUR, B. 2014. Some advantages of the notion of ‘critical zones’ for Geopolitics. Procedia Earth and Planetary Science, 10, 3-6.

MELTON, C. O. 2022. Growth Statistics [Online]. Available: https://www.melton.vic.gov.au/Council/About-the-City/Demographics/Growth-sta7s7cs [Accessed 19 April 2023].

MELTON, C. O. 2023. The Edge: a Group Exhibition of Artwork created for the City of Melton [Online]. Available: https://www.melton.vic.gov.au/Out-n-About/Arts-culture-heritage/Art-Exhibitions/Current-exhibitions/The-Edge [Accessed 20 April 2023].

MOK, H.-F., MAJUMDER, R., LAIDLAW, W. S., GREGORY, D., BAKER, A. J. M. & ARNDT, S. K. 2013. Native Australian Species are Effective in Extracting Multiple Heavy Metals from Biosolids. International Journal of Phytoremediation, 15, 615-632.

MORTON, T. 2018. Dark Ecology: For a Logic of Future Coexistence, New York, Columbia University Press.

PASCOE, B. 2018. Dark Emu: Aboriginal Australia and the birth of agriculture, Magabala Books.

SHEPARDS, S. The Impacts of Stormwater-Car Emissions [Online]. Available: https://www.stormwatershepherds.org.au/blog/the-impact-of-stormwater-car-emissions/ [Accessed 3 February 2023].

SIMARD, S. 2021. Finding the Mother Tree: Uncovering the Wisdom and Intelligence of the Forest, Dublin, Allen Lane.

STANCIC, Z., FIKET, Z AND VUJEVIC, D. 2022. Can Urban Grassland Plants Contribute to the Phytoremediation of Soils Contaminated with Heavy Metals? Molecules, 27.

VICTORIA, E. P. A. 2011. Industrial Waste Resource Guidelines: Soil Remedia7on Technologies in Victoria. In: VICTORIA, E. (ed.).

YARRA, C. O. 2016. Water Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD) Guidelines for City of Yarra Works. City of Yarra.

DRUM B   Grevillea banksia x bipinnatifida ‘Robyn Gordon’, Rhagodia spinescens  
DRUM I    Doryanthes excelsa, Dichondra repens
DRUM G   Adenanthos sericeus, Themeda triandra

DRUM S   Grevillea robusta, Eucalyptus gunnii
DRUM O   Eucalyptus cladocalyx nana, Dianella longifolia
DRUM I    Backhousia citriodora, Poa poiformis
DRUM L    Acmena smithii, Minor Ficinia nodosa

_{Artwork Credits: Heather Hesterman. BIG SOIL. recycled oil drums, wheels, paint, soil, scoria, Australian native plants (various). Melton Botanic Garden, 2023.
Production team: Kieran Meegan, Mitch R Signs. In partnership with the Friends of the Melton Botanic Garden.
Photography by Shawn Smits.} 

Heather Hesterman is an interdisciplinary artist/educator/researcher based in Naarm/Melbourne working with installation, print-based media, community, education and landscape design. She is interested in the intersections of plants, people and places informed by research in climate change, history and plant studies.

Activating spaces through plant-human relations, Heather aims to foster ‘vegetal-love’ through gifting, walking practices, mobile devices, collaborative acts and conversations. Reflecting upon plant methodologies, she encourages humans to slow down, become attuned to surroundings, grow gardens, walk amongst vegetal beings and plant more trees.

Heather is currently undertaking a PhD at the University of Tasmania researching how to address human 'plant blindness' by cultivating chlorophilia - a love for plants and investigating how plants might inform creative practice.