Sick country
Level Two
For more than 65,000 years, First Nations peoples have tended Country, using fire as a tool of management and care. Low-temperature burns, timed to the seasons and moisture levels, cleared undergrowth without destroying ecosystems. Eucalypts are among the most flammable trees on earth. While many species have evolved to withstand fire and some require burning to propagate, others are fire sensitive and fail to regenerate. Maintaining a delicate balance was, and remains, essential.
Yet, throughout Australia, deforestation continues for agricultural, industrial and urban development. Dense regrowth and massive fuel loads feed bushfires of increasing intensity and frequency, while water extraction and worsening droughts and floods push eucalypt ecosystems toward collapse. Many species grow naturally only in finite regions, and one quarter of all gum tree species are threatened with extinction.
The works of art in this room speak to this crisis. Some allude to its causes, while others capture the aftermath of disaster: fire-scarred forests and drowned trees, giants felled by forces beyond their endurance. Beyond the physical, some works convey a deeper unease, picturing the landscape as a place of psychological tension – hostile, unfamiliar, and the body within it exposed and vulnerable.
