What to Write (Right)

Eucalypt (detail) Charcoal, pencil, rust marks and rain on handmade paper

It’s easy to take for granted what is in your own backyard. If we don’t protect the things we value, then it can allow them to be destroyed, right under our noses.

Joni Mitchell’s famous song Big Yellow Taxi (1970) sums it up:

 “Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone
They paved paradise, put up a parking lot”

Art as activism is about finding a platform to voice your concerns. I keep thinking about all the environmental movements of the 1970s and beyond. How important tracts of land have been saved from development by people committed to valuing their beauty and putting themselves on the line for nature.

Now more than ever we need people to stand up for trees, for forests, the coral reefs, the other than human elements of a landscape. To consider every rock, tree or mineral under the ground not as a resource we can exploit, but as having its own intrinsic value. 

So how can we build activism into our art? Sometimes it is the subjects we focus on that imbue them with value; the beauty of an old building, a wildflower or the way moonlight shines on a river. Other times it could be through performance, music or words. Street art shines a mirror on society often through humour and juxtaposition (think Banksy).  

I’ve been considering this as I write the 20 page booklet about the Art of Place I am investigating for my final Masters project. I’ve changed the title of the project to better reflect what it is I am focusing on; making art, in place and that place being of value.

As I write the short text for each page, I am creating a story of place; how it feels, what you might hear or smell there. The intangibles that make a place special, yet have no monetary or “productive” value. It is a currency of care, sharing the qualities of light or sounds that I value. By doing this I am seeking to right the potential wrongs which could befall such places through lack of care.

To write is powerful. To write right is even more so. I may not hold vigil on a platform in the forests of Tasmania to stop the clear-felling, but I can create art about the places and qualities that I cherish in my own backyard. It’s my own art activism.

Here is a little excerpt from my book:

“linger a little in liquid birdsong
hear the sea thrum a background
song beyond the coastal verge
a place to pause or dream
bathing in nature”

Street sign at the entrance to the Koala Beach suburb in Pottsville