Skip to main content

Going with the Flow

Art, Science, History and the Sydney Harbour

Aleksandr Andreas Wansbrough
Eyeline 87
The following is a brief preview - the full content of this page is available to premium users only.
Click here to subscribe...

Art, science and history are becoming increasingly focused on locality. Yet, in a globalised context, such locality expresses questions of universal importance. As such, the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Opera House and Sydney harbour itself are among the most identifiable features of Australia and thereby become metonymic of how to integrate the urban with the ecological. Part of the success of the Opera House is that its design complements the sails of boats as well as waves. But at the same time, given overdevelopment and pollution, the harbour has had to be cleansed and is a subject of scientific study and artistic generation.

On the 28th April 2017, the Sydney Environment Institute held a conference entitled Sydney Harbour: Intersections of the arts, sciences and humanities. As the name suggests the conference explored broad themes relating to science, art and history—themes at the forefront of inter-disciplinary research. The conference focused not merely on the various risks facing the harbour, but the planet and its inhabitants, from micro flora and fauna to fish and, of course, us.

The conference showcased both scientific research and works of art. The art included work by Robyn Backen, Frederico Câmara, David Watson, and the collaborative public sculptures by Jennifer Turpin and Michaelie Crawford. This article will explore these artworks against the analyses of ecology. Such entwining, reverberating shifts within and between discourses bespeak an idea of art as a type of flow; its constant movement being shaped by and shaping its environs. As art theorist Boris Groys has argued, flow is pronounced in our contemporary world where paradigms change and shift based on technologies. Flow, he maintains, is antithetical to boundaries and stasis and is characterised... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline

Robyn Backen with Ichthyologist, Brooke Carson-Ewert, Fishing the Spirit house, from Catching…the harbour, 2001. Mixed media, dimensions variable. Photograph Ian Hobbs. Collection the artist and Australian Museum.

Robyn Backen with Ichthyologist, Brooke Carson-Ewert, Fishing the Spirit house, from Catching…the harbour, 2001. Mixed media, dimensions variable. Photograph Ian Hobbs.
Collection the artist and Australian Museum.

Frederico Câmara, Sea Life, 2014. Sydney Aquarium, Sydney.

Frederico Câmara, Sea Life, 2014. Sydney Aquarium, Sydney.