You don't know what you've got till it's gone

This week I went to the Water exhibition at Queensland Gallery of Modern Art. The exhibition includes Riverbed, by Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson, an installation of a stoney river bed, complete with running water, which fills an entire gallery floor space.

Visitors walked the hill formed of grey rocks and stones to have an experience of landscape in a gallery setting. It was indeed beautiful, but I was somewhat underwhelmed because I had seen the real thing at many sites in Iceland during September and October this year.

It brought to mind the nature and purpose of art. To be a mirror to ourselves, to show us the world through new eyes, to reflect back to us what we see in many cases, everyday but made more precious because it is “framed” in a gallery context.

While in Iceland, I went on several tourist trips to see glaciers, thermal pools and sights of historical interest. Each time the bus stopped to let us out, we joined hundreds of other tourists looking at the same sites, the same wonders of nature. Many had never seen ice before. The giant icebergs floating in an ever increasing lake of melted glacier water were a poignant reminder of all that we may lose if the earth’s temperatures continue to rise.

Are we in fact witnessing the evolution of water, ice and snow as gallery artefacts, so precious they are preserved in museums for us to marvel at, like the fossils and dinosaur skeletons of old. Roll out the water warriors, the artists, the dissidents who remind us of all it is to be human on planet earth.

I am reminded of the Joni Mitchell song Big Yellow Taxi (1967):

They took all the trees
And put them in a tree museum
And they charged all the people
A dollar and a half to see 'em
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
'Till it's gone
They paved paradise
And they put up a parking lot

**************************** At the end of each blog post in December I will be announcing the lucky newsletter subscriber recipient of the 2020 desktop calendar inspired by Iceland. Carol Skyring from NSW has been selected as this week’s winner. Congratulations. Carol!

If you want to be in the draw for a 2020 calendar then sign up to my newsletter this week.