Bianca Hester
Working between drawing, writing, sculpture, walking and reading, this event invites visitors to engage with interconnected biologic, geologic and social histories evident across the Illawarra and Shoalhaven areas of the Sydney Basin bio-region. This performance responds to a kaleidoscope of material fragments that are witness to the movements of the earth, and the pulses of extinction registered in its lithic bodies. From residues mineralised out of the vestiges of Glossopteris forests that collapsed at the end of the Permian era, to the airborne ash discharged during the 2020 bushfires, this work considers the interdependence of colonial inheritance and its extractive relations, with the environmental crisis. This longform project – including the performance at Bundanon – confronts the instability of thought and materiality at the close of the Holocene on personal, communal and planetary scales.
Bianca Hester’s work investigates the material conditions and geo-social histories of contested sites and extractive zones across Australia. Through a combination of fieldwork, archival research and writing, sculptural production and performed actions, she produces multi-layered projects that unpack the diverse sedimentations of specific locations which shape their present condition.
