Darling Darling

The pairing of the films in Darling Darling does not simply contrast our ability to inflict great damage on the material world with our capacity to nurture and protect it, but also suggests that these behaviours are interconnected. Darling Darling’s soundscape seems to confirm this as the two worlds sonically bleed into one another. The measured tones of the art conservators at work seep into environmental sounds of the outback; the gentle squeal of trolley wheels crossing tiled floors intermingles with magpie warbles, the buzz of a hand drill punctuates the soft rustle of dried leaves.

The convergence of ecological and art historical narratives in Darling Darling suggests the absurdity of a cultural logic that appears to value representations of the natural world over nature itself. The care and damage depicted are revealed as manifestations of the same anthropocentric worldview that has long underpinned Western colonial thought and history.

In the era of the Anthropocene, defined by the irreversible impact of human activity on Earth’s systems and processes, the legitimacy of our rule over the natural world is under sustained scrutiny. The catastrophic bushfires that tore through much of Australia over the summer of 2019-20, followed closely by the global impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, have brought our interdependence with the natural world into stark relief. Many of us have emerged from these events feeling fragile and disorientated as we learn to live in a state of uncertainty – the illusion of our mastery over our world and our own lives diminished, if not fully vanquished.

– Curator Shelley McSpedden

This is an extract of the longer essay When the river runs dry: on Darling Darling by Gabriella Hirst, which you can read below.