Title

Meekatharra Mining

Date/s

2001

Location

Meekatharra, Western Australia

Discipline

Painting | Stencil

Artist Statement

After a year of sporadic employment, I relented and went out on a 120 hole drilling rig mission deep into the backcountry of Meekatharra in Western Australia, drilling for vanadium. After five weeks of searing 42-degree heat, we hit ‘pay dirt’ and found enough of a deposit to warrant them returning on it in 20 years' time I was told. The main lesson for me was in understanding that sheer desperation had led me to deeper calamity - we were drilling for a substrate, a mineral that was used as a steel hardener in military ordinance used in wars overseas. In horror I took my sample bags and created a series of works, mixing drilled rock and pindan to depict the hidden American/Australia military base and massive airstrip out there, the role of the 44-gallon drum in colonizing that Country, and aerial views that I brought forward in my mind's eye. At Curtin University I recycled a whole heap of American Cedar pine that was being dumped out near the old Gnangara Reserve, in Perth, Western Australia, and made wooden panels to paint and stencil upon. It was no surprise that after lugging these ‘works’ around five or six household moves that I gave up and let them go - I burned the whole collection and felt like a traitor having made the mistake in the first place.

Substrate

Ground ochre (drilling extract), epoxy resins, bitumen, silver spray paint, timber.

Dimensions

Various panel sizes

Status

Destroyed

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