This body of work is the culmination of Annique Goldenberg's Doctor of Visual Art (Research) exploring the nature of our relationship with Living Water in a time of climate crisis. A deliberate and slow study of listening, transformation, kinship, care, and co-creation, the final work was conceived in ice and flood, and concludes in flood and ice, emerging as a meditation on our profound entanglement as companions with the Earth's water-cycles.
The research has been shaped by both personal experience and stories shared by others, human and nonhuman. Time spent in the High Arctic witnessing accelerated glacial melt, along with the impact of three extreme floods in her own community, deepened Annique's understanding and sense of responsibility for our intercon-nectedness with Earth's hydrological systems. These experiences, along with a lifetime spent living on or near water, have reinforced her awareness of the fragility and resilience of this essential element to which we are so intimately related.
In Grey Street Gallery, an anthology of ten artist books invites visitors to engage with their watery presence using touch, smell, sight, sound, and curiosity. Emerging out of creative projects throughout the research, each book embodies insights andan essence of their respective stories, through their form and materiality
The White Box Gallery harbours an environment where time, water, and memory intertwine. Visitors are invited to explore a library of flood companion books, born out of photocopy paper rescued after the Northern Rivers 2022 floods on Bundjalung Country. Co-authored over a year of companion thinking in a reflect-and-response dance between Annique, the elements, and the paper, the books are now frozen in ice as a metaphor for the planetary link of glacial melt and extreme weather that is central to their story. A daily ritual with the ice books welcomes visitors to join as companion thinkers with water, in a continuing act of reflection.and response.
__________________
Exhibition dates: 26 November - 7 December
Location: Grey Street Gallery & White Box | Queensland College of Art and Design, Griffith University, 226 Grey Street, South Bank, 4101
Opening Hours: 10am to 4pm, Tuesday - Saturday | Special opening hours 2pm - 7pm on Sunday 1 December.