About the Event
In a submersive experience of light and shadow, growth and collapse, accretion and decay, Rich and Rare explores our history and future with native flat oyster reefs.
The (almost) lost world of Ostrea angasi (native flat oyster) reefs are intrinsic to Albany/Kinjarling’s history, as recorded in the name of Oyster Harbour. Jacqui materialises the angasi’s fragility, sensitivity, delicacy and now-skeletal distribution in the form of a piece of machine-embroidered lace. With this ethereal artefact, through photography and video installation, she examines ecological grief, amnesia and collective memory, and invokes the reef’s return and restoration.
After first encountering old bleached ostrea angasi shells in a deposit near Eden, NSW in 2022, Jacqui began a personal investigation that took her from Yuin country on the south coast of NSW to north-eastern Lutruwita/Tasmania and west to Oyster Harbour in
Kinjarling/Albany, WA. Angasi once formed plentiful reefs around Australia’s southern shoreline, some of them hectares in size. Extraction, overconsumption and environmental change brought them near extinction within a century of European arrival. In recent years, Oyster Harbour was one of the sites chosen by the Nature Conservancy Australia to attempt their restoration.
Artist Talk: Saturday, 5th September, 10.30am RSVP