2020

This print by Miriam Austin appeared in her solo exhibition Andesite at Bosse & Baum in 2020 - 2021. The background image shows one of the largest open cast mines in New Zealand and is overlaid with two forms taken from a Tesla vehicle, and an image of an opal. The Tesla forms are echoed in other metal sculptures in the exhibition. Opals are present within a number of sculptures, embedded in platinum silicone forms cast from the external parts of a Tesla. These elements, which relate to research into the ecological implications of imperialism and extractive industry, function as part of the installation in the gallery, used by Austin to evoke the fictional and mythical subterranean city of Selvaga. Within this imagined space organic technologies are manufactured, promising reprieve from ecological crisis. The exhibition is set at the threshold between the underground realm of Selvaga and a terrestrial zone, which refers to the real, ancestral story of Annie Kelly, Austin’s great-great-grandmother, who was one of the early European colonists of New Zealand. The works in Andesite open a conversation with the dead, exploring the psychic and earthy spaces of extractive industry, colonial settlement, and matrilineal communion. The inclusion of specific materials and formal references within the installation raises questions about interdependence, kinship and responsibility. Creating hybrid forms that enact sometimes disturbing forms of juxtaposition and mixing, Austin traces narratives that depict diverse forms of relatedness, cutting against dominant approaches to environment and kinship found in patriarchal Western societies.

C-type digital print on matte photographic paper

21 x 16 cm
Edition of 30
Unframed