Sunday Arts Magazine

8 Feb 2021

Gabriella Hirst talks to David and Neil about the new exhibition Darling Darling

Art Exhibition, Visual Arts

One of the fantastic new commissions that will be a headliner in the revamped museum is the visual art installation Darling Darling which will take up residency as the first solo gallery since the closure in 2019. This incredible work by Sydney-born, London-based artist Gabriella Hirst is the consequence of a $100k Ian Potter Moving Image Commission (IPMIC) grant – part of Australia’s most significant long term commissioning program of new contemporary moving art by Australian artists.

 

The work parallels the precise and elaborate care taken to preserve colonial paintings of the Australian landscape with the real-world preservation of the Murray Darling Basin, highlighting the tension between the two. A multi-screen video work, it juxtaposes the meticulous care taken to restore WC Piguenit’s 19th Century Romantic painting of the Barka-Darling River, The flood in the Darling 1890 (1895), with footage of the present-day ecological plight of the river system. Speaking to the importance of both artwork and the environment, it invites us to reconsider our relationship to the concept of conservation in the face of environmental degradation.

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