Project Synopsis - Undermining Rivers

Left: ‘Upper Nepean Water Supply Scheme, 1880–1883’.

Showing (clockwise): Upper Nepean Water Scheme, brick-lined inlet of Mount Annan Tunnel, Upper Nepean Water Canal, Water Supply.

Black and white photos courtesy Campbelltown and Airds Historical Society.

Notes: Four tributary rivers, the Cataract, Bargo, Cordeaux and Avon Rivers, flow into the Upper Nepean River. The four big Upper Nepean dams—Nepean, Avon, Cordeaux and Cataract—supply 20% of Sydney’s supply of drinking water. Water is pumped from the upper Nepean River through the Nepean Tunnel to Broughton’s Pass Weir on the lower Cataract River, and on to the city’s Prospect Reservoir. Two dams also supply drinking water to the Illawarra region.

Julie Sheppard, ‘Waratah Rivulet: Cracked, Drained, Polluted’, 2007. Colour photographs.

Note: The Waratah Rivulet in the Sutherland Shire south of Sydney makes up about 30% of the Woronora Dam catchment. The Rivulet is dry because of the impacts of underground longwall coal mining 500m below the surface.

Toni Warburton, ‘Transactions to Catchment’, 1990-2007.

‘Drinker’, 1990, (Transactions effigy 1), detail. Effigy gesso and pigment on moulded paper pulp over welded metal.

‘Transactions Evocation 3’, 1990–2007.

Graphite wall text:

“At the end of his dinner, even when he is no longer thirsty, he is always seen with the air of an epicure who holds his glass for some exquisite liquor, to fill his glass with pure water, take it by sips and swallow it drop by drop. But what adds much interest to this scene is the place where it occurs. It is near the window, with his eyes turned towards the country that our drinker stands. As if in this moment of happiness, this child of nature tries to unite the only two good things that have survived his loss of liberty: a drink of limpid water and the sight of sun and country.”

Reference: Jean Marc Gaspard, The Wild Boy of Aveyron, ‘Functions of the senses’, chapter XVI. Translated from the French by Century Psychology Series, 1932. First published: Itard, ‘De l’Éducation d’un homme sauvage, ou des Premiers développements physiques et. moraux du jeune sauvage de l’Aveyron’, Paris, 1801.

Toni Warburton, ‘Transactions to Catchment’, 1990-2007. Installation detail, The Cross Art Projects.

First shown in an exhibition curated by botanist Dr Phillip Kodella, Toni Warburton, Stephen Mori and Luke Parker and advised by Dr David Tranter from Roberston Environmental Protection Society (REPS), 2002. The exhibition raised funds to sponsor a Wingecarribee Swamp website by Karen Beder. Artist credits are listed on the site: www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/sbeder/wingecarribee/history/chronology.html

Toni Warburton, ‘Catchment Studies: volume 4’. Cover of artist book

Toni Warburton, Catchment Studies: volumes 1-5, 2002–2007.

Collage, paper, cardboard, gesso photocopies, watercolours, coloured pencil, ink, graphite, glue, book binders’ muslin, buckram. Artist books bound by Newbold and Collins.

Artist Notes on Catchment Studies and CATCHMENT: a field of beakers for St Hedwig of Silesia and for Wingecarribee swamp (edited):

The austerities of Saint Hedwig (d.1243), Queen and patron saint of Silesia, were assisted by her moulded and cut glass beaker. The Hedwig beaker (there are reputedly eleven in the world today) attained the status of a relic as it had the miraculous property of making ordinary water taste so pure that it seemed like an exquisite wine.

Peat, an ancient and essential purifying filter for wetlands was dredged from Wingecarribee Swamp in the Southern tablelands of NSW under the cynical jurisdiction of a mining lease, despite ten years of public outcry. This removal of part of its structural fabric weakened the entire peat land and in 1998, after heavy rains, most of the swamp collapsed. This ecological disaster also compromised the local drinking water.

(c)Toni Warburton January 2001, revised February 2007

Toni Warburton, Rain water in a glass, 1999. Lithograph.

Undermining Rivers: Sydney’s Drinking Water Endangered by Longwall Coal Mining 18 July to 11 August 2007 Artists Deborah Vaughan & Toni Warburton with Patrice Newell & Julie Sheppard of Rivers SOS		CROSS CONVERSATION
An exhibition placing works by leading contemporary artists Deborah Vaughan and Toni Warburton side-by-side with activist commentary to ask who owns Sydney’s pristine water resources. Rivers in our sacrosanct water catchment areas have been cracked, drained and polluted: undermined by underground coal mining. Sydney Catchment Authority has no power to stop mining directly under and beside the rivers and dams of the Upper Nepean catchment area. Until recently, it was fundamental that protection zones applied to essential drinking water catchments. In the midst of a global water crisis what new madness is this? Although these special catchments are normally hidden from view, dramatic photographs by environmentalist Julie Sheppard show vanished rivers and creeks, poisoned water and barren ground. Longwall coal mining causes this subsidence damage. Once the gargantuan longwall machine has made its cut (of up to 2km long) and passed, the roof is allowed to fall. The short film ‘Rivers of Shame’ shows the wider impacts of this greed for coal. In their installations, artists Deborah Vaughan and Toni Warburton also raise moral questions. As Deborah Vaughan’s work ‘Train Schizzes’ (2007) underscores, coal supplies are no abstract issue but one close to our heart. Her looped footage of empty and full coal trains eternally running up and down the Illawarra Line suggest the conflict: our computers, stoves and heating run on cheap coal-fired electricity. But we pay with environmental consequences. In Toni Warburton’s ‘Wall Chronology: Transactions to Catchment’ (1990-2007) a sculptural figure of a boy in eighteenth century dress drinks a beaker of water. He seems to read a poetic wall-text describing the pleasure of his drink. Alongside, an elegant wall installation of ceramic, glass and artist’s books connects the ancient beaker form and purification rituals to the natural science of water filtration. If the coal mining damage continues, we will need more than a desalination plant to secure adequate water resources. Global warming has begun and there is more abrupt climate change ahead. Yet our policy makers and state Treasury are reluctant to change their ways. In recent years, the state government has approved new longwall leases for the world’s largest resources company BHP Billiton (Illawarra Coal) and the world’s largest coal company, Peabody Energy (Metropolitan Mine), under our water catchments. More are in the pipeline. Rivers SOS campaigns for a safety zone of at least 1km round all rivers to protect them from ongoing damage. Rivers SOS is a coalition of environment and community groups formed as a result of the wrecking of rivers in NSW by mining operations. Julie Sheppard, ‘Map showing proposed longwall coal mines that threaten rivers in Upper Nepean and Upper Georges River Special Catchment Areas, NSW’, 2007. Printed map, pen and collage.		Opening conversation: 18 July 2007 with Patrice Newell & Julie Sheppard of Rivers SOS. Also screening of short film, ‘Rivers of Shame’ Help Change Policy & Stop Our Water Being Ripped Off! Visit the websites: www.riverssos.com , www.tec.org.au Make a Submission: to the Inquiry into Underground Coal Mining in the Southern Coalfield (stretching from Sydney to the Southern Highlands) until 30 July 2007. Submissions must address the terms of reference. See terms at Department of Planning www.planning.nsw.gov.au/planningsystem/panels.asp Post: Southern Coalfield Panel Secretariat, c/- Department of Planning, GPO Box 39, Sydney 2001. E: Peter.Downes@planning.nsw.gov.au. The Inquiry’s terms of reference don’t even mention the water supply catchments. The Inquiry is directed to trade off revenue with stopping coal mining related damage to essential water supplies. In any case, the Minister for Planning, Frank Sartor, has unfettered powers to approve extensions to leases under Part 3A of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act (1979). Other Links Exhibitions The Trouble with the Weather: UTS Gallery, July 2007; www.utsgallery.uts.edu.au Roni Horn: Vatnasafn/Library of Water, Iceland 2007 www.libraryofwater.is; www.artangel.org.uk (commissioning agency) Alison Clouston & Boyd: www.burragorang.org Rivers & Climate Change Campaigners Rivers SOS www.riverssos.com The Total Environment Centre www.tec.org.au Colong Foundation for Wilderness www.colongwilderness.org.au/CatchmentMining/CatchmentMining.htm Save the Drip www.savethedrip.com Water First, Sutherland Shire www.waterfirst.localaction.com.au Sutherland Shire Environment Centre www.ssec.org.au Rising Tide Newcastle www.risingtide.org.au Nature Conservation Council www.nccnsw.org.au State Government Coal Mining Approvals Process DOP – Department of Planning – www.planning.nsw.gov.au DOP is a consent authority for mining as it manages the conditions of consent that are placed on any mine before the mine gains approval from the Department of Mineral Resources (DMR) to commence mining. The Minister is Frank Sartor. DMR – Department of Mineral Resources – www.minerals.nsw.gov.au DPI – Department of Primary Industries – www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/ The Department of Mineral Resources is the primary consent authority for coal mining as it grants mining leases. It comes under the umbrella of the Department of Primary Industries (DPI). The Minister is Ian Macdonald. DMR conducts a Commission of Inquiry (CoI) for each new mining lease that it grants. DMR must consider the environmental impact of certain activities. The company develops a mine plan, which may include an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) and which must gain approval from the Department Planning before the actual mining can commence. There is no requirement for DPI to display a Review of Environmental Factors (REF) or receive submissions from the community. Special Thanks: Patrice Newell, Climate Change Coalition and Julie Sheppard, secretary Rivers SOS. Thanks also to Dave Burgess, Total Environment Centre, Bob Percival, Woolloomooloo Film Society, Lisa Havilah, Campbelltown Art Centre and Vivian Vidulich, Wollongong City Gallery. Download show catalogue Undermining Rivers
Deborah Vaughan, ‘Train Schizzes’, 2007. Installation, variable dimensions.		Deborah Vaughan, ‘Stop Flogging off Water’, July 2007, flier. Download full PDF
		Left: ‘Upper Nepean Water Supply Scheme, 1880–1883’. Showing (clockwise): Upper Nepean Water Scheme, brick-lined inlet of Mount Annan Tunnel, Upper Nepean Water Canal, Water Supply. Black and white photos courtesy Campbelltown and Airds Historical Society. Notes: Four tributary rivers, the Cataract, Bargo, Cordeaux and Avon Rivers, flow into the Upper Nepean River. The four big Upper Nepean dams—Nepean, Avon, Cordeaux and Cataract—supply 20% of Sydney’s supply of drinking water. Water is pumped from the upper Nepean River through the Nepean Tunnel to Broughton’s Pass Weir on the lower Cataract River, and on to the city’s Prospect Reservoir. Two dams also supply drinking water to the Illawarra region.
Julie Sheppard, ‘Waratah Rivulet: Cracked, Drained, Polluted’, 2007. Colour photographs. Note: The Waratah Rivulet in the Sutherland Shire south of Sydney makes up about 30% of the Woronora Dam catchment. The Rivulet is dry because of the impacts of underground longwall coal mining 500m below the surface.		Toni Warburton, ‘Transactions to Catchment’, 1990-2007. ‘Drinker’, 1990, (Transactions effigy 1), detail. Effigy gesso and pigment on moulded paper pulp over welded metal. ‘Transactions Evocation 3’, 1990–2007. Graphite wall text: “At the end of his dinner, even when he is no longer thirsty, he is always seen with the air of an epicure who holds his glass for some exquisite liquor, to fill his glass with pure water, take it by sips and swallow it drop by drop. But what adds much interest to this scene is the place where it occurs. It is near the window, with his eyes turned towards the country that our drinker stands. As if in this moment of happiness, this child of nature tries to unite the only two good things that have survived his loss of liberty: a drink of limpid water and the sight of sun and country.” Reference: Jean Marc Gaspard, The Wild Boy of Aveyron, ‘Functions of the senses’, chapter XVI. Translated from the French by Century Psychology Series, 1932. First published: Itard, ‘De l’Éducation d’un homme sauvage, ou des Premiers développements physiques et. moraux du jeune sauvage de l’Aveyron’, Paris, 1801.
Toni Warburton, ‘Transactions to Catchment’, 1990-2007. Installation detail, The Cross Art Projects. First shown in an exhibition curated by botanist Dr Phillip Kodella, Toni Warburton, Stephen Mori and Luke Parker and advised by Dr David Tranter from Roberston Environmental Protection Society (REPS), 2002. The exhibition raised funds to sponsor a Wingecarribee Swamp website by Karen Beder. Artist credits are listed on the site: www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/sbeder/wingecarribee/history/chronology.html		Toni Warburton, ‘Catchment Studies: volume 4’. Cover of artist book
Toni Warburton, Catchment Studies: volumes 1-5, 2002–2007. Collage, paper, cardboard, gesso photocopies, watercolours, coloured pencil, ink, graphite, glue, book binders’ muslin, buckram. Artist books bound by Newbold and Collins. Artist Notes on Catchment Studies and CATCHMENT: a field of beakers for St Hedwig of Silesia and for Wingecarribee swamp (edited): The austerities of Saint Hedwig (d.1243), Queen and patron saint of Silesia, were assisted by her moulded and cut glass beaker. The Hedwig beaker (there are reputedly eleven in the world today) attained the status of a relic as it had the miraculous property of making ordinary water taste so pure that it seemed like an exquisite wine. Peat, an ancient and essential purifying filter for wetlands was dredged from Wingecarribee Swamp in the Southern tablelands of NSW under the cynical jurisdiction of a mining lease, despite ten years of public outcry. This removal of part of its structural fabric weakened the entire peat land and in 1998, after heavy rains, most of the swamp collapsed. This ecological disaster also compromised the local drinking water. (c)Toni Warburton January 2001, revised February 2007		Toni Warburton, Rain water in a glass, 1999. Lithograph.