Ten Trenches

Ten Trenches is part of the Trust’s SITEWORKS project, a three year conversation between artists, scientists, historians, archaeologists and local people exploring the site of Bundanon.

Renowned Indigenous songman for the Shoalhaven region, Cecil McLeod, with wide performance experience around the world with Doonooch Dance Company, participated in a creative development residency at Bundanon in March this year. Artists and scientists from around Australia came together under the direction of two brothers, Tim and Michael Cohen: a leading environmental scientist researching the indicators and effects of sea-level rise on NSW river systems, and a site-based performance and installation artist, to investigate the possibilities, revealed and imagined, on the Bundanon floodplain.

Seventy invited guests from the arts and sciences gathered at Bundanon on 7 March to join the conversation and witness a performance that incorporated the auger holes and slot trenches that were excavated over a ten day period to reveal the flood behaviours of the river from up to 8,000 years ago.