“Darling Darling” is a two-channel video installation exploring hierarchies of care, romanticism and the enduring colonial gaze upon the Australian landscape and the devastation of Australia’s third largest waterway, the Barka Darling River.
The installation presents two contrasting perspectives of the same body of water: the detailed work by art conservators to restore the 19th century painting, “The flood in the Darling”, 1890, by colonial painter WC Piguenit, and the environmental crisis facing the Barka Darling today, as a result of drought, climate change, and severe water mis-management. Presented simultaneously, the sounds from these two contrasting locations leak into one another, blurring the boundaries between these two seemingly distinct treatments of care and implicating the viewer in the contradictions of the Gallery. The film is a timely investigation into the nature of environmental care and neglect, scrutinising the colonial gaze on Country and the relationship between pictorial framing and ecological destruction.
“Darling Darling” was filmed at various sites on Barkindji Country, under the guidance of Barkindji Elder Uncle Badger Bates, and on the sovereign lands of the Gadigal at the Art Gallery of NSW.
Darling Darling is the result of Australia's most significant commission for moving image art, the Ian Potter Moving Image Commission (IPMIC), an initiative of the Ian Potter Cultural Trust and ACMI.
images: Gabriella Hirst "Darling Darling" 2021 (c) the artist
