Publication Details 208 pages, 28 x 20cm, section sewn cold glue bound, softcover with flaps. Perimeter Editions 069. First edition of 500. ISBN 978-1-922545-05-3
Printed by Wilco Art Books, Netherlands. Editorial and critical review process: Natalie Robertson (Ngāti Porou, Clann Dhònnchaidh), Dr Monique Redmond, Dr Astrid Lorange, Dr Saskia Beudel, Therese Keogh, Pita Turei (Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki, Ngāti Pāoa, Ngaa Rauru Kiitahi). Copyediting and proofreading: Marie Shannon. Design: Paul Mylechrane and Kim Mumm Hansen, Public Office
Author and/or Editor name/s Bianca Hester
Author and/or Editor bio/s Bianca Hester is an artist, writer and educator living and working on unceded Dharawal land. Her expansive multimedia art practice explores the material conditions of contested locations – particularly within urban domains and extractive zones across Southeastern Australia. Through a combination of fieldwork, archival research and writing, studio production and performed actions, she produces multilayered projects that unpack the diverse sedimentations of specific locations, which have shaped their present condition. This generates an expansive form of public art unfolding as a series of objects, actions and texts in dialogue with a range of interlocutors, collaborators and participants. She is a long-term member of the Open Spatial Workshop with Terri Bird and Scott Mitchell and a Senior Lecturer and Co-Director of Research and Engagement in the School of Art and Design at UNSW, Sydney. www.biancahester.net
Year of publication 2021
Publisher Perimeter Editions, Melbourne
Abstract Groundwork, a major new book by Sydney-based artist Bianca Hester, finds its footing in the volcanic terrain of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand. An expanded sculptural project that grew out of a series of research residencies in 2015, Groundwork is both social and geological in scope. Focused on a series of sites across the city where human activity, geology and ecology have converged in fraught and revealing ways, the book maps connections between the landscapes of Te Kōpuke Mount St John and Te Tokaroa Meola Reef; Ihumātao and Takapuna; Waterview and Matukutūruru Wiri Mountain. Through collaborative and consultative processes with local people, this work encompasses walking, sculptural production, exhibition, archival research and writing between 2015 and 2020. Engaging with landscape as a nexus of geologic materialities, nonhuman durations, land expropriation, extractive activities and ecological transformations, the book proposes multiple ways to apprehend the complex sedimentations of a city.
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