Flow-Glowing Rocks

Research Background: Bogong ELECTRIC was a site-specific environmental exhibition and performance program focused on the Kiewa Valley HEP scheme, Victoria curated by Philip Samartzis and funded by Australia Council and Arts Victoria. The objective was to investigate the relationship between the natural and constructed environment using artistic practices that conceptually and/or materially addressed electricity as part of the production and presentation. It included international and national participants such as Michael Vorfeld (Germany), Klaus Filip (Austria), Christophe Charles (France) and Australians Geoff Robinson and Lizzie Pogson. Lucy Lippard described such site-specific art as a movement and Bogong ELECTRIC relates to such events as ANTI Contemporary Art Festival in Finland and the Sea Art Festival in Korea. Research Contribution: Flow-Glowing Rocks is a site-specific piece that responded to the variable flow of water down the valleys that lead to the power plant and thus to the production of electricity - a change from one power source to another, natural to constructed. I painted a selection of rocks in a small, dry valley approximately 500 metres long with phosphorescent paint to emulate the flow of water. The paint, invisible by day glowed after dark to reveal a current of light flowing down the valley visible from a number of directions. Research Significance: Flow-Glowing Rocks builds on previous work involving light, an intangible medium that permeates and defines all that is visible. Light is also defined by its antithesis, darkness, to which humans have been equally attracted in both material and psychological senses and this work plays with both qualities of light.