I acknowledge and pay respect to custodians – past present and emerging – on sovereign Dharawal Wodi Wodi land where I live and conduct this creative practice. I extend this respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. As a beneficiary of a colonial continuum and the resulting disproportionate distribution of wealth across this continent – I Pay the Rent – and invite you to do so too.

Bianca Hester

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Bianca Hester is an artist, writer and educator engaged in place-based practice through artistic research. Her work investigates entanglements between colonial inheritance, extraction, environmental crisis, evolution and extinction evident within locations across the Australian continent. Employing relational, embodied and situational methodologies – she combines experimental fieldwork, engaging the geologic record (in archives and in situ), site-writing, sculptural production, collaboration and performed actions – to develop projects that unpack the material conditions of specific places. This generates an expansive form of public art unfolding in dialogue with a range of interlocutors and participants.

Reading walking lithic bodies MCA – Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney
(2022)

Reading walking lithic bodies is a walking-based performance that combines listening, walking, and tactile engagement. Moving between five locations through Tallawoladah The Rocks – on Gadigal Land Sydney – this work involves fragments spoken in response to the material conditions of the walk, alongside sculptural objects, images and texts. The work considers the entanglement of social and environmental forces in each location – and the way colonial inheritance, environmental crisis, evolution and extinction bind them together.

A2 split fountain silk screen images (edition of 250), set of 22 performance objects (bronze), text, performance-walk (duration 75 minutes)

  • Commissioned by MCA senior curator Anneka Jaspers
  • Readings by Bianca Hester, performed with Clare Cooper and Astrid Lorange
  • Dramaturgy by Sarah Rodigari
  • Poster-scripts designed by Paul Mylecharane, Public Office
  • Screen printing by Trent Walter, Negative Press
  • Photography by Anna Hay
Anthropogenic, Archive, Basalt, Brick, Bronze, Colonial continuums, Coal, Concrete, Cosmic, Deep time, Digging, Dirt, Dust, Embodiment, Extractivism, Extinctions, Floor, Fossil, Fragment, Geologies, Groundwork, Installation, Materiality, Object, People, Performance, Permian, Place, Plant life, Process, Meteorite, Moving, Moving image, Rubbings, Sandstone, Sculpture, Singular objects, Site, Sociality, Steel, Still image, Textual, Triassic, Walking, Wall.