March 24, 2014
Maidenwell artist Jill Sampson said she hadn’t fully appreciated how fragile life on the land could be until a foreign mining company turned up at a neighbours’ property wanting to sink some exploration bores.
Jill was speaking at the Wondai Gallery today about her work on the Bimblebox Art Project, a two-year effort by 16 artists to document the Bimblebox Nature Refuge in central-west Queensland before it gets subsumed by a massive coal mine.
A small audience heard that the Bimblebox Nature Refuge is an 8000ha patch of land located roughly 500km west of Rockhampton and 30km north-west of Alpha.
It conserves six regional ecosystems and is also home to at least one endangered bird species – the black-throated finch – and possibly other endangered species as well.
The refuge has been maintained by local farmers to be used for low-impact cattle grazing in times of drought.
Ten years ago they signed agreements with the State and Federal Governments to conserve the land against all threats, including mining.
But now both governments have given approval to Clive Palmer’s “China First” mine in the Galilee Basin which adjoins the Bimblebox Nature Refuge, and now the refuge is likely to vanish when the mine is built.
Jill told the audience she’d become interested in documenting Bimblebox before it disappeared because she felt it was a unique piece of Australia.
About two years ago she persuaded 15 other artists and curator Beth Jackson to join her in a project that would try to capture the sights, sounds and feelings of the Refuge before they vanished forever.
“Bimblebox was very easy to love when we first went there,” Jill said.
“There’d been some good rains and all the native flowers were in bloom.”
But a year later when the artists went there again, the area had returned to its usual dry conditions. Even so, the group found it just as captivating and continued their work.
The result of their efforts will be an exhibition that will go on display at the Redlands Art Gallery from May 18 to June 29.
And if funds are forthcoming, the exhibition will also be shown at 10 other galleries around Australia, including the Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery.
Jill received an RADF grant from the South Burnett Regional Council in the second year of the project to be mentored in curating by the Bimblebox Art Project’s curator, and she spent part of her talk discussing what curating any exhibition involved.
Then she showed examples of some of the works that individual artists had undertaken to illustrate how difficult putting together such an ambitious and complex exhibition could be.
Speaking about the refuge’s impending destruction, Jill said “I don’t personally see this as a political issue – it’s just the environment we’re in at the moment.”
But she said Bimblebox had shown her that mining could happen to anyone, anywhere … including the South Burnett.
Jill said that in addition to the travelling exhibition, the Bimblebox Art Project would also be available to view for free online, through a free downloadable app, and in a small print catalog. All of these were still in development.
She also paid tribute to the South Burnett’s RADF Committee and urged them to continue to offer mentoring opportunities to the region’s artists.
She explained how she’d spent three years at art college in Sydney before moving back to the South Burnett, and found the opportunities for artists to expand their skills that she’d become used to in a capital city simply didn’t exist in the bush.
- Related article: Jill Shares Tales From Bimblebox Art Project
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