DIGITAL CATALOGUE

InTrODUCTIOn

River to River – interwoven landscapes is an exploration of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal perspectives on place, identity, and cultured memory concerning the Nepean and Lachlan river environs.

Penrith based artist, Bronwyn Berman, and Condobolin based Wiradjuri weaver, Bev Coe, were invited to produce new work to be exhibited in conversation. The practice of each artist has long engaged with the river scapes of the nepean and Lachlan rivers. Their artworks push the boundaries of traditional techniques involving weaving, wrapping, dyeing, sculpture and drawing.

Artists Bronwyn Berman and Bev Coe met in April 2014 in Condobolin during a weaving workshop and community garden festival. Through skills sharing, their individual practices were enhanced and elaborated - the result of which is to be found in River to River – interwoven landscapes.

The exhibition is the capstone of a wider project, entitled river to river. This project took place across 2012-2014, between artists and communities of the Penrith and Lachlan Shires. Under the auspices of Penrith regional Gallery & The Lewers Bequest, and the support of Vincent Fairfax Family Foundation, river to river, brought together creatives of both regions to share and teach skills, perform and create artwork. In doing so this project has sought to build regional capacity and promote cross cultural understanding.

Particular thanks is due to exhibition artists, Bronwyn Berman and Bev Coe who have produced a most beautiful suite of artworks which offer a profound meditation upon both nepean and Lachlan river environments and life forces.

Dr Lee-Anne HallDirector,August 2014

nepean river, (Date Unknown)Image courtesy Penrith City Council

Bev Coe, Various Works, (2014) Image Penrith regional Gallery & The Lewers Bequest

Bronwyn Berman, There is another alphabet, (2014),Paper waxed linen thread, paper contact printed with plant material from the nepean river

Image courtesy The Artist

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rIVEr TO rIVErInTErWOVEn LAnDSCAPES

The river is life and family… not just water. [It] is a liquid asset in more than economic ways.

Rivers connect both people and places so it is fitting that this exhibition, representing the relationship between Penrith and Condoblin, is constituted around two such significant waterways. This exhibition is bound by the nepean (Dyarubbin) and Lachlan (Kalare) rivers and like all geographically significant features they bear the markers of our past.

Dyarubbin was home to the Mulgowie people, whose “country stretched along the river from Castlereagh to the Mulgoa area” in Darug country. The river itself provided ample hunting and fishing grounds to sustain the local population. Its gravel beds also yielded a range of stones allowing for the large scale production of stone tools. The workshops that emerged around these raw materials are thought to have supplied “the whole region north of Botany Bay.” Dyarubbin was also crucial to the success of early colonial agricultural efforts providing irrigation for crops along its banks in the first steps towards self-sufficiency. This was vital before the opening up of the interior with the completion of the Great Western road across the Blue Mountains in 1814-15.

Once this pass was open, greater opportunities for farming and settlement were within reach. Bathurst became the first colonial inland town established on the banks of what became known as the Macquarie river. Bathurst was used as a staging post for further exploration notably by George Evans in 1815 who, in his search for the inland sea, instead stumbled upon Kalare and renamed it in honour of the then Governor of nSW, Lachlan Macquarie.

Evans and his compatriots were travelling through Wiradjuri country and it is estimated that there were around “3,000 Wiradjuri living in the region” at the time of European colonisation. Wiradjuri country is bordered by three major waterways – the Lachlan, Macquarie and Murrumbidgee rivers – which “were the primary source of food for the Wiradjuri people.”

Of course the colonial ‘discovery’, and subsequent re-naming of these rivers highlights the hubris of such ex-plorers who failed to recognise the authority of Aborigi-nal traditional owners and their custodial relationship to county. Had they been able to see past their own nar-row conceptions of land tenure, technology and social organisation a more complex picture of life on the river would have emerged.

Rivers flow. They are in a constant state of motion. They both shape and are shaped by their surrounding landscapes. So it is appropriate that the rivers in this project have functioned as a meeting place for artistic exchange – for the shaping and reshaping of ideas. It is this desire for a more nuanced understanding of the rivers, and the capacity to learn from others, that has informed the selection of Wiradjuri artist Beverly Coe and non-Indigenous artist Bronwyn Berman for this show.

Each of these artists has shared their knowledge as artists, over the common ground of their river experiences.

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For Coe and Berman alike, exploration has been a core element of their practice. Observing, sensing, collecting and making. Process is central to each of them.As a Wiradujri weaver, the development of Coe’s work begins with walking through country in search of raw materials such as Kangaroo Grass. This exploration is a seasonal undertaking for, as Coe explains, plants aren’t always available or suitable throughout the year. Coe’s practice is an expression of her understanding of these seasonal variations reflecting her ongoing relationship with country. Once material has been gathered, Coe uses Wiradjuri weaving techniques to create functional objects like baskets alongside large-scale sculptural fibre works.

In her work we see the life of the river and glimpse something of life on the river. Materials from the bush around the river are used to represent the fauna that subsists within the river and which sustains the people of the river. Coe’s work reminds us that rivers are not just about irrigation and agriculture. Instead she presents the river as an ecosystem, habitat for Gulaangga (Frog), Dangur (Cat fish), Gagalin (Yellow belly fish) and Guya (Redfin fish). Her baskets and Wargong (canoes) remind the viewer of the place of humans in this environment, travelling on the surface and collecting food and materials for their own subsistence.

Her movement away from utilitarian objects towards aesthetic sculptural forms establishes her work in a long tradition of Aboriginal women fibre artists who have “continued to innovate, and to incorporate new materials, functions, and forms into their weaving repertoire [which] underlies the continuing strength and increasing diversity of fibre crafts in Australia.”

Even amongst Coe’s more traditional basket shaped forms we can see this innovation blossoming. Her tightly structured coiling has literally unravelled in her willow basket which is formed from a loosely woven set of fibres that includes introduced species such as Willows, so synonymous with Australian waterways, intertwined with natives like bottlebrushes. Coe’s basket is a significant departure from her other work – its form echoes the utilitarian nature of baskets but its execution is much more decorative and abstract.

The range of her work signals the strength and diversity of practice that NT curator, Margie West identified. This is further reinforced by Coe’s desire to pass on her craft to others and in the process to protect the environment that is its starting point. She has expressed an aspiration to “establish local and regional women’s networks to support fibre art, and to establish a project to protect and/or reintroduce fibre producing plants in local areas.” This ambition confirms West’s assertion that weaving is a “sociable and culturally confirming” practice.

Bronwyn Berman, You and I have floated here on the stream, 2014,Paper, casurina roots, waxed thread, gum leaves, paper contact printed with

plant material from the nepean riverImage Penrith regional Gallery & The Lewers Bequest

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For Coe it is a representation of country and an opportunity to educate others in order to continue the tradition and affirm her culture.

Weaving is also a part of Bronwyn Berman’s work. In her practice however the geometric patterns that emerge in the waft and the weft reflect her interest in the formal structures that are created by nature itself. As her work for this show developed, the emphasis on these structures has lessened as the fluidity of the river and its constantly changing state has taken over.

Berman works with found objects. She scours the riverbanks for raw materials that are incorporated into her artworks – her process has been one of experimentation based on exploration. The resulting body of work is mixed in media incorporating sculpture, sculptural works with paper and works on paper.

Each of these artists has shared their knowledge as artists, over the common ground of their river experiences. For Coe and Berman alike, exploration has been a core element of their practice. Observing, sensing, collecting and making. Process is central to each of them.

As a Wiradujri weaver, the development of Coe’s work begins with walking through country in search of raw materials such as Kangaroo Grass. This exploration is a seasonal undertaking for, as Coe explains, plants aren’t always available or suitable throughout the year. Coe’s practice is an expression of her understanding of these seasonal variations reflecting her ongoing relationship with country. Once material has been gathered, Coe uses Wiradjuri weaving techniques to create functional objects like baskets alongside large-scale sculptural fibre works.

In her work we see the life of the river and glimpse something of life on the river. Materials from the bush around the river are used to represent the fauna that subsists within the river and which sustains the people of the river. Coe’s work reminds us that rivers are not just about irrigation and agriculture. Instead she presents the river as an ecosystem, habitat for Gulaangga (Frog), Dangur (Cat fish), Gagalin (Yellow belly fish) and Guya (Redfin fish). Her baskets and Wargong

In her Floodplain pieces she incorporates river red Gum limbs, found on the Lachlan, with river stones, bones, and other detritus found on the nepean. These are bound with highly polished aluminium – the only man-made element in these works. The wire recalls the silvery colours of the Australian bush it also conjures up images of newly erected fences used to inscribe boundaries across the landscape. Historic fence lines were still visible at Castlereagh as late as 1999 where the “boundaries of the 1803 settlers’ farms” could still be seen marking it as “one of only two surviving early colonial farming landscapes.”

What Berman’s work does is to help the viewer to see that the river collects all of this history. It seizes upon its detritus and deposits it in the crooks of branches where it is lodged and becomes the high tide mark of the waves of history of that place. This is the power of the river and the resonance of working with found objects.

In some pieces however the wire is not bound but rather it cascades over its timber frames or ripples around stones mimicking the movement of water within river systems. In these works the shimmering wire seems alive and animated, a feeling which is also evoked in her large scale drawings. These drawings are enveloping in scale consuming the viewer in the white noise of the water that they depict.

Drawing has been a constant in Berman’s practice and it was only after much experimentation with materials and form that she returned to this medium to express the river. In fact the drawings represent many years on the river with images from previous river lives on the Wingecarribee and Hawkesbury also inspiring their creation. The drawings are the distillation of a lifetime of art practice and river exploration – as Berman says, “doing these drawings has come with a sense of…coming home.”

The final element of Berman’s installation is mixed media work with paper. Here the paper has literally been transformed by the life of the river, boiled and stained with plant material, interwoven with lichen and roots and stitched with waxed lined thread to create three-dimensional representations of its form and flow. Roots feature prominently in these pieces, specifically the roots of the casuarina tree so populous along the banks of the nepean.

Dr Anna LawrensonMuseum and Heritage Studies ProgramUniversity of SydneyAugust 2014

The symbolism here is rich. roots recall the colonial attempts to manipulate the land – trees were felled and stumps burnt – only the tree roots remained as evidence of the original landscape. These roots have now also been extracted in the next wave of colonisation – that of industry. The quarrying that has taken place on the banks of the nepean, particularly around Castlereagh has been immense. The rich topsoil that originally attracted agriculturalists has been stripped in order to access the more valuable sand and gravel beneath. Sydney has literally been built from the banks of the nepean.

The roots in Berman’s work however also signify a more personal journey, the search for place and belonging, a sense of ‘rootedness’. Berman talks of living a transient life and laments the lack of connection to a single place and yet the river, and its perennial casuarinas, seems to have provided that anchor.

While the Lachlan and nepean rivers are geographically distinct they have each inspired a connection or belonging manifested in the work on show in this exhibition. This has been inspired by the intimate explorations of Coe and Berman. There is always common ground. There is the water itself, the life that it sustains but perhaps most importantly there is the desire to share one’s knowledge. Belonging, as Peter read reminds us, “means sharing and that sharing demands equal partnership.”

Bronwyn Berman, I am haunted by waters, longing, (2014) Cold pressed paper, charcoal, pastel

Image courtesy of The Artist

ArTIST STATEMEnT

BEV COE

Whether it’s painting or weaving, art has always been very personal to me. It’s all I’ve ever known; it gives me purpose, direction and a creative outlet that cannot be matched. I began weaving eight years ago after I was introduced to the practice in a class with local women. During each session, the other women and I would weave raffia and sedge collected from the Lachlan river.

I’ve since developed my practice and technique using the Lachlan river as inspiration. This river is very important; it forms a very deep spiritual connection to the country. My children swim here, the men fish here, and my family meet here.

As a child growing up in the region, I would see lots of animals: fish, turtles, and the totem of my tribe – the goanna. It’s from these early memories which I source my inspiration. I haven’t always woven large-scale animals. My start was in basket weaving, and through watching, listening and practicing with others, I’ve been able to further develop my technique.

I weave everyday now. My hands are always going. I’ve taught my daughters, my two sisters and my nieces. I’d like to think that there’s a weaver in all of us, and this is the skill I try to bring out in everyone.

Bev Coe, Gugah (Goanna), (2014)Coil weave, natural raffia

Image Penrith regional Gallery & The Lewers Bequest

Bev Coe, Various Works, (2014) Image Penrith regional Gallery & The Lewers Bequest

Bev Coe, Various Works, (2014) Image Penrith regional Gallery & The Lewers Bequest

Bev Coe, Various Works, (2014) Image Penrith regional Gallery & The Lewers Bequest

ArTIST STATEMEnT

BrOnWYn BErMAn

My work explores the recurring signs and symbols that are embedded in the deep collective consciousness. In public art works and larger sculptural installations the response centers on landscape and natural systems, speaking to our inner ‘knowing’ of the earth body. My studio practice, paper works, drawings and small sculpture, explores the simplest and most basic signifiers of these systems through an inquiry into archetypal forms, as well as themes of the recurring mysteries that are at the foundation of our human experience.

Have you also learned that secret from the river; that there is no such thing as time?” That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere and that the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past nor the shadow of the future.

Herman Hesse, Siddartha

The body of work I have produced for ‘river to river’ considers the river as a metaphor for human life itself. The river is a flow of many patterns coming from the source and returning to the source, in it’s tortuous windings passing through shadowy gorges and silently over still pebbles. Barriers across it’s path bring only power, and on it’s banks, the river leaves an ever changing gallery of strangely stranded curiosities. Only these mark time and passing events, the river itself lives not in the past nor in the future but in this very moment.

Bronwyn Berman, Your mountains and rivers know the secret, (2014)Paper waxed linen thread, paper contact printed with plant material from the nepean river

Image courtesy The ArtistBronwyn Berman, A way from the river to the sea (maquette), (2014)

Casuarina roots, copper wire.Image courtesy The Artist

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Bronwyn Berman, There is another alphabet (2014)Paper waxed linen thread, paper contact printed with plant material from the nepean river

Image courtesy The Artist

Artist Bronwyn BermanImage Penrith regional Gallery & The Lewers Bequest

Bronwyn Berman, You and I have floated here on the stream, (2014)Paper, casurina roots, waxed thread, gum leaves, paper contact printed with plant material from the

nepean riverImage courtesy The Artist

LIST OF WOrKS

BEV COE

Dangur (catfish)2014Coil weaving, steel frame, rattan cane and dyed raffia

Gagalin (yellow belly fish)2014Coil weaving, steel frame, rattan cane and dyed raffia, quondong

Guya (redfin fish)2014Coil weaving, steel frame, spiny sedge, natural raffia

Wargong (canoe)2014Coil weaving, steel frame, spiny sedge, natural raffia

Muriin (canoe)2014Steel frame, paper bark, raffia

Basket2014Willow Tree

Wambuwung (kangaroo)2014Natural fibre, kangaroo grass, wallaby grass

Gugah (goanna)2014Coil weave, natural raffia

Warramba (turtle)2014Willow tree, rattan

Gulaangga (frog) 2014 Coil weaving, steel frame, rattan cane and dyed raffia

LIST OF WOrKS

BrOnWYn BErMAn

You and I have floated here on the stream2014Paper, casurina roots, waxed thread, gum leaves, paper contact printed with plant material from the nepean river

There is another alphabet2014Paper waxed linen thread, paper contact printed with plant material from the nepean river

Your mountains and rivers know the secret2014Paper waxed linen thread, paper contact printed with plant material from the nepean river

What the river says, that is what I say2014Paper, flax thread, funus, paper contact printed with plant material from the nepean river

Woven Landscape: Time is the substance from which I am made2014Paper, casuarina roots, sisal thread, paper contact printed with plant material from the nepean river

A way from the river to the sea2014Casuarina roots, aluminium wire, charcoal

A way from the river to the sea (maquette)2014Casuarina roots, copper wire

The soul remembers2014Cold pressed paper, charcoal, pastel.

Under darkness, whispering2014Cold pressed paper, charcoal, pastel

I am haunted2014Cold pressed paper, charcoal, pastel.

Can you hear me2014Cold pressed paper, charcoal, pastel

Veil of tears2014Cold pressed paper, charcoal, pastel

I was better after I cried, than before2014Cold pressed paper, charcoal, pastel

The murmurings2014Casuarina roots on to wall.

Where the river has been (Works 11 – 18)2014river red gum, aluminium wire (re-used communications cable), nepean river stone, wombat bones

OPEnInG ADDrESS

Thank you to Dr Lee-Anne Hall director of the Gallery for the invitation to open the river to river exhibition which I am delighted to attend.

I would like to talk to you about rivers. Inland and coastal rivers in new South Wales and beyond are complex diverse ecosystems. They have intrinsic value. They also support much human social, cultural and economic life across new South Wales and indeed Australia. rivers incorporate wetlands, estuaries and floodplains and so provide diverse habitats to a very wide range of native animals and plants. Australian rivers and their ecosystems are of course unique.

European Australians in new South Wales and beyond have only relatively recently woken up to the need to better protect our rivers. The history of water policy and regulation in new South Wales up to the 1980s saw substantial over-allocation of water to water users such as industry, farmers, irrigators and towns for drinking water, and the building of dams and weirs, with consequential environmental damage such as loss of aquatic species and degraded rivers on a large scale. One indicator of that environmental stress was the many large algal blooms reported in the media over many years. While the regulation of water has been substantially overhauled and improved in the 1990s, dealing with that damage continues and remains difficult to address.

The Commonwealth and State governments started to consider the need for water reform in the early 1990s and a national water initiative was launched in 2003. Each Australian state has passed new laws over time which provide greater statutory protection to surface

and groundwater systems. The management of rivers remains challenging given their complexity and the many demands both man-made and natural placed on them. Providing adequate environmental flows to ensure the health of the natural environment remains a challenge in many catchments.

The last nSW State of the Environment report published in 2012 stated that since 2009, improved flows in most inland and coastal rivers have eased some of the stresses experienced by the systems during the prolonged drought and enhanced the productivity of aquatic ecosystems. While the condition of macroinvertebrate communities has shown some improvement, fish communities have been slower to respond. The majority of inland rivers are still affected by the ongoing pressures of water extraction and altered flow regimes and the overall river health ratings have largely remained poor to very poor. Coastal rivers are less affected by these pressures and were considered likely to be in better health overall.

rivers are important in the Australian landscape and have been the subject of art work for many centuries. Considering more recent European artistic endeavour, in 2007 to mark the 25th anniversary of the national Gallery of Australia, an exhibition of important works from the national Collection “Ocean to Outback: Australian Landscape Painting 1850–1950” toured Australia. Several of the iconic landscape pictures which toured as part of the exhibition included river scenes. One of these was by Charles Piguenit a Tasmanian who moved to Sydney and painted “On the nepean” in 1881, a beautiful picture painted in a traditional landscape style.

OPEnInG ADDrESS

Justice Nicola Pain - Land and Environment Court of NSWPenrith Regional Art Gallery30 August 2014

LIST OF WOrKS

This exhibition pays artistic tribute to two mighty rivers from an Aboriginal artistic perspective and a European artistic perspective.

The nepean - Hawkesbury river surrounds much of Sydney and was used extensively by Aboriginal people for food and ceremony and some of that activity is likely to continue today. It is the largest river/estuary system in the Sydney region. It provides habitat for many native plants and animals. It provides 97% of the fresh drinking water used in the Sydney region. It faces major challenges due to extraction for drinking water, irrigation and industrial uses and the many polluting sources that flow into it, particularly from urban areas.

In 1788 Sir Arthur Phillip, the Governor of new South Wales, charted the coast 50 km north of Port Jackson to the mouth of a large river and travelled around 30 km upstream. Governor Phillip named the river after Lord Hawkesbury.Lieutenant Watkin Tench who arrived as a British marine in 1788 provided extensive descriptions of the early days of the colony in Sydney. In “A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson” he details the natural environment of Port Jackson and the land around it and the first interactions between Europeans and Australian Aborigines. He also detailed his exploratory trips away from the colony. On one of these Lieutenant Tench walked inland west of Sydney. About 60 km inland he discovered a large river which he named nepean after Evan nepean, the Under Secretary of State at the Home Office. It would be about three years before the colonists realised that the Nepean flowed into the Hawkesbury and were the one river system.

The historian Inga Glendinning in her marvellous book “Dancing with Strangers” also provides insights into how the areas around Sydney including rivers such as the nepean appeared to early settlers. She also describes how the natural environment played an important backdrop to the early and at that time peaceful interactions between colonists and Aboriginal people in the very early days of the colony.

Bronwyn Berman’s contemporary sculpture and weaving celebrates the nepean river and also incorporates material from the Lachlan river. The Lachlan river is

part of the vast Murray Darling Basin system. Several Aboriginal nations are the traditional custodians of the land surrounding the Lachlan river with the Wiradjuri a significant nation in that area.

The European discoverer of the Lachlan river in 1815 was Acting-Surveyor George Evans. He named the river after Lachlan Macquarie, then Governor of the colony of new South Wales. For a time the southern part of the Lachlan was known as Fish river. After further exploration it was realised that these two rivers were the same river and the name Lachlan was applied to its whole length.

The Lachlan river provides a wide range of aquatic habitats in its floodplains, pools and billabongs. It is the only river in New South Wales with significant wetlands along its length, including nine wetlands of national significance. One of these, the Great Cumbung Swamp, is one of the most important waterbird-breeding areas in eastern Australia and supports the largest stand of river red gums in new South Wales.

The catchment of the Lachlan river covers about 8% of the area of the Murray-Darling Basin, accounts for about 10% of the land area of new South Wales and generates 14% of the state’s agricultural production.

The history of Aboriginal people and their understanding and interaction with rivers such as the Lachlan is deep and culturally rich. We are very fortunate to have before us the sculpture and weaving of Bev Coe expressing her response to the Lachlan river.

The cultural and artistic associations with rivers such as the Hawkesbury-nepean and the Lachlan are as important as the social and economic benefits they provide to us. It gives me great pleasure to declare open the river to river exhibition which explores these cultural and artistic associations and to congratulate the artists Bev Coe and Brownwyn Berman for their beautiful and thought-provoking sculptural work.

ACKnOWLEDGEMEnTS

This exhibition has been made possible through the generosity of the Vincent Fairfax Family Foundation, and the support of Penrith Performing & Visual Arts, Penrith City Council, ArtsnSW, Lachlan Shire Council, the Wiradjuri Study Centre, ros Patton and Heather Blackall.

River To River - Interwoven Landscapes

Curators: Dr Lee-Anne Hall Zona Wilkinson

Catalouge Essay: Dr Anna Lawrenson University of Sydney

Exhibition Project Manager: Micheal Do

Public Programs & Media: Dimity Mullane

Design: Samantha Thomas Paula Perugini

© Penrith regional Gallery & The Lewers BequestAll rights reserved

86 River RoadEmu Plains NSW 2750

(02) 4735 2750penrithregionalgallery.org

Bronwyn Berman, Where the river has been (detail), (2014) river red gum, aluminium wire (re-used communications cable), nepean river stone, wombat bonesImage courtesy The Artist

Brownwyn Berman, You and I have floated here on the stream, (2014)Paper, casurina roots, waxed thread, gum leaves, paper contact printed with plant material from the nepean riverImage courtesy The Artist

Bev Coe, Various Works, (2014) Image Penrith regional Gallery & The Lewers Bequest

Bev Coe, Gagalin (yellow belly fish), (detail), (2014)Coil weaving, steel frame, rattan cane and dyed raffia, quondong

Front Cover Images

Bronwyn Berman, The soul remembers, (2014)Cold pressed paper, charcoal, pastel.Image courtesy The Artist

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