KARRA: KARRAWIRRAPARRI-RIVER RED GUMEUCALYPTUS CAMALDULENSIS

摘要

Karra was a visual arts project devised for the 2000 Adelaide Festival in Australia. Its focus was the River Red Gum, quite justifiably an Australian icon, and once the most widespread tree in south eastern Australia. The project comprised an installation by three artists and a forty-page publication with essays and visual material from many contributors. The intention of the project (which I developed and oversaw as curator) was twofold. First, I hoped that an examination of the River Red Gum from a number of points of view might help people connect with the tree itself, and more broadly with this place non-Aboriginal Australians so uneasily inhabit. Second, given the tree's central place in Australia's inland waterways, I wanted the art to help people consider the urgent problems facing this ecosystem, such as increased salinity, diminished water flow and environmental degradation. This subject had particular relevance for South Australians, as our state is so dependent on the Murray-Darling River system. For example, in February 1999 the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation published a media release on "Salt: Australia's Greatest Battle," declaring that we stand to lose a large fraction of our native biodiversity to salinity, and that native tress "remain the front line answer."