Bianca Hester’s practice investigates the material and geologic conditions of contested sites across the continent. Her situated mode of working responds to the temporal, social, and environmental intersections of location, acknowledges the continuities of sovereignty, and reckons with the ongoing colonial legacies of extraction. Her expansive multidisciplinary approach spans sculpture, walking, text, and video.
‘Lithic Bodies’ is a long-term project developed in the Illawarra coastal region, where Hester has lived since 2018. This exhibition of new work explores environmental entanglements surrounding the Permian‑Triassic ‘extinction line’ present across the Sydney Basin and visible at the base of the Illawarra Escarpment. Here, the greatest mass extinction—when the Australian continent was part of Gondwana around 252 million years ago—is visibly registered. The line bears witness to climate change in deep time and resonates with the current environmental crisis. It acts as a conceptual and material loop between the carbon cycles of the deep past, where fossilised solar energy carries forward into the present, irrevocably shaping future Earth systems.
‘Lithic Bodies’ assembles processes, materials, and narratives generated in response to the extinction line and its associated material conditions and temporalities. This exploration ranges from the intimate scale of fossilised leaves to filmic depictions of the sandstone escarpment and its ecologies. The installation features sculpture, image, and video made in relation to the terrains of the Illawarra, as well as from geologic artefacts held in the palaeobotanical archives of the Australian Museum. The exhibition is accompanied by interdisciplinary place-based walks and a public program held at the Clifton School of Art, Clifton.
In ‘Lithic Bodies’, Hester explores ways to attune to the geologic conditions of life and our indebtedness to the non-human. She contends with the instability of thought and material at the close of the Holocene, and its personal, collective and planetary implications.
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Curated by Bronwyn Bailey-Charteris
Parallel project presented at Clifton School of Arts, 12 October 27 October 2024. For details and bookings, please visit this link.
Image: Bianca Hester, Extinction Line (video still), 2024. Courtesy of the artist and Sarah Scout Presents, Naarm/Melbourne. Photo: Samantha Hawker.
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