A team of ANU School of Art & Design staff, students and panel presenters were making glass fish and sharing interdisciplinary research during a US hosted international live stream event last Friday, 21 May.
School is a multi-disciplinary performance and exhibition project that raises awareness of international fish population decline, river and water management issues. As a community led initiative it places First Nation voices at the centre of international conversations about water and land care.
In conversation with US based instigator and artist Joseph Rossano, Nadege Desgenetez, School of Art & Design Lecturer, Dr Virginia Marshall (ANU Post-Doctoral Indigenous Fellow), Ms Meredith Hope (Honorary Lecturer ANU College of Science), Ms Michelle Leonard OAM (Artistic Director of Moorambilla Voices) and Ms Ngaio Fitzpatrick in absentia (Visiting Artist ANU Climate Change Institute) shared research projects, discussed pressing issues around Australian river health, and made glass fish with a team of SOA&D students, including incoming PhD student, Ms Harriet Schwarzrock.
The glass forms made in the Workshop will be mirrored and join a traveling site responsive sculpture made by communities around the world. Together with events and shared resources, the work casts light on the diminished state of global salmon populations and the habitat on which they depend. As School expands beyond the geographical limits of Salmonidae habitat, the project becomes a metaphor for all species affected by human activity and climate change.
It is currently considered as a back drop for the upcoming UN Climate Change Conference (COP26).
The streaming interdisciplinary performance is travelling across the USA, UK, Scandinavia, Japan and Australia.
Thank you to hot shop team Rory Branson, Isobel Kennedy, Bethany Lick, Jeremy Maffescioni, Dylan McCracken, Bronwyn Sargeson and photographer Evana Ho (ANU).
Image Gallery
