Where Lakes Once Had Water - AAANZ | The Art Association of Australia and New Zealand

Publication Details Paperback, 165 x 240mm portrait, 278 grams, 136 pp, 86 full colour image plates. ISBN 978-0-6483215-2-1

Author and/or Editor name/s Author: Sophie Knezic. Editor: Judith Blackall

Author and/or Editor bio/s Sophie Knezic is a writer and researcher with a focus on the nexus between art theory, Continental philosophy and post-Conceptual practices in contemporary art. She is a regular contributor to Frieze and Australian Book Review and currently lectures in Critical and Theoretical Studies at VCA, University of Melbourne.

Judith Blackall is an independent contemporary art curator and writer based in NSW. She has held senior positions at the National Art School Gallery and Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art, and is currently collaborating with Bundanon Trust for Sonia Leber and David Chesworth: Where Lakes Once Had Water.

Year of Publication 2021

Publisher Bundanon Trust in association with CABAH

Abstract Sonia Leber and David Chesworth: Where Lakes Once Had Water is a new exhibition catalogue published by Bundanon Trust in association with the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage (CABAH).

In 2018-19, artists Leber and Chesworth were invited to travel with a team of Earth scientists to locations of long-term aridification in remote areas of Australia’s interior and top end. The journey took them to expansive, ancient landscapes of the ephemeral Lake Woods to Nitmiluk/Katherine Gorge and coastal Girraween Lagoon, and resulted in the audio-video artwork Where Lakes Once Had Water (2020).

The publication features four diverse essays. Sophie Knezic’s essay situates Leber and Chesworth’s work in a lineage of 20th century sound art and acoustic transduction. Fiona Gruber focuses on the artists’ working process and Tim Flannery provides insights into the geological science and climatic change underpinning the project. The text concludes with an open conversation between the artists and Michael-Shawn Fletcher, an earth scientist who worked on the project at Girraween Lagoon (NT) and a descendent of the Wiradjuri people, who studies the long-term interactions between humans, climate, disturbance, vegetation and landscapes in the southern hemisphere.

Designed by Public Office, the publication features a bold colour palette reflective of the visited environmental sites and includes photographic images as time-stamp frames extracted from the audio-visual work. Supported by the Gordon Darling Foundation Where Lakes Once Had Water is a richly illustrated volume of 136 pages and 86 images.