Rural Utopia exhibition showcases artist residencies in rural WA

Her sound, video, and sculpture installation is part of Rural Utopias, which opened on Saturday and will continue until February 18.

The group exhibition, and its corresponding virtual showcase, features new works from 10 mid-career artists from across Australia, which were developed during a series of rural residencies undertaken in WA since 2019.

To mark the opening, a forum with the participating artists was held at the gallery at the weekend.

The artists worked in collaboration with their host communities - at Wellstead, Carnamah, Ravensthorpe, Lake Grace, Mt Barker, Margaret River, Esperance, Roeburne, Kalgoorlie/Boulder and Kununurra.

They each developed a series of artistic works in two six-week blocks, first presented in their host communities and culminating in their final pieces now on show at the Art Gallery of WA in Perth.

Each artist also used as inspiration, pieces they chose from the gallery's $361 million State Art Collection, allowing the gallery and artists to consider the relevance of the State collection to regional communities.

Given how difficult it is to mount a travelling exhibition, little of the State's vast collection gets displayed outside Perth - which means country people never get a chance to see thousands of publicly-owned works.

Ms Pedler's project was forged from a friendship with artistic and farming duo Richard Davy and his partner Kerry Dell'Agostino, who own Windi Windi Pastoral Co at Wellstead - a relationship formed by a chance meeting at Ms Pedler's collaborative 'Eat the City' workshop in Albany in 2018.

Ms Pedler had already visited and stayed at Windi Windi when, in 2019, project co-producer Spaced called for submissions for Rural Utopias, so she was ready to go with an idea.

"The fact that we had an existing relationship worked in our favour,'' Ms Pedler said.

"We had started visiting the farm and so we could quickly move onto the question of what we wanted to make during the residency which was in the interests of the communities of Wellstead and nearby Cape Riche.''

Three years and a pandemic later - and after the birth of her daughter Juno in April 2022 - Ms Pedler headed back to Windi Windi for the second stage of her project.

It has culminated in a sculpture of Juno and Mr Davy and Ms Dell'Agostino's daughter Esmae Della-Davy - who were born three months apart - lying in play together.

In the work, Ms Pedler projects onto the babes, videos of images and interviews she filmed in and around Wellstead during her residencies.

It is all overlaid with a soundtrack of locals talking about the importance of the community and its history - and a lot about its plants.

The audio has been woven through with field recordings, recorded and composed by collaborator Josten Myburgh, a musician and composer based in Perth, who travelled with Ms Pedler to Wellstead and stayed at the farm as well.

Ms Pedler said as an artist, she was interested in following people's lives, and having conversations with them about their interest in their environment.

"It was very clear that Richard and Kerry's relationship with the land was integral to what they were doing with the farm,'' she said.

The couple farms just over 2200 hectares, 100 kilometres east of Albany, where it runs 4000 mainly Merino sheep and crops about 200ha of organic oats and hemp.

Ms Dell'Agostino, whose family ran a beef farm in Mullalyup, is also reintroducing Angus cattle to the property.

They farm organically, using holistic management principles and are dedicated to reclaiming the blue gum country and revegetating native corridors.

As a long-time writer of prose and an abstract photographer, keen on documenting the world around him through both art forms, Mr Davy said his friendship and artistic collaboration with Ms Pedler developed very naturally.

"Having a keen interest in art myself, I would naturally support and encourage artists endeavours from within and outside the rural landscape, however I can,'' Mr Davy said.

"There is so much going on in the rural arts scene and the rural setting .''

So when the possibility of participating in Rural Utopias came up, he was keen to get involved - other artists and regional communities felt like-wise.

Other WA artists participating in the project included Alana Hunt who travelled to Kununurra, Jacky Cheng was with Salvatore Caruso and Nigel Smith at Margaret River, Jo Darbyshire with Andrea Williams at Lake Grace and Bennett Miller at Mt Barker.

East Coast artists Sarah Rodigari, Tina Stefanou and Ana Tiquia visited Ravensthrope, Carnamah and Esperance respectively, Northern Territorian Georgie Matthingley went to Kalgoorlie and WA-based, German artist Nathan Gray was at Roeburne.

Spaced Rural Utopias curator Miranda Johnson said during their residencies, each artist fostered meaningful collaborations with a local individual or group.

"Artists collaborated with local practitioners, in some instances to produce collaborative bodies of work,'' Ms Johnson said.

She said by working in different environments and connecting with a regional community, all the Rural Utopias artists had challenged themselves and pushed their practices to new horizons.

"What has emerged from these residencies are deeply considered, collaborative projects that engage with local contexts, champion regional creativity and through engagement with the State Art Collection, consider the relevance and reach of this collection to regional Western Australians,'' Ms Johnson said.

Indeed, one of the universal themes that came from the group of Rural Utopias artists was the relevance of the State's valuable art collection, when much of it is never or rarely on display.

Ms Johnson said combining the pieces with an existing artwork allowed the gallery to present some of the State collection to new and broader audiences.

Ms Pedler chose as her inspiration several historical botanical illustrations from the Joseph Banks' Florilegium.

Fremantle-based artist Ms Darbyshire, who grew up in Lake Grace and returned for her residency to work with Lake Grace Regional Artspace, used as her inspiration two works by indigenous painter Ronald Williams.

The Williams' paintings have not been shown to the public at the Art Gallery before.

Ms Pedler began her Rural Utopias residency in 2019, when she went to stay at Windi Windi for six weeks.

She lived in a renovated, World War II Nissen hut on the farm, which was built from a piece of curved aluminum long before the original homestead was constructed.

Ms Pedler said from conversations with Mr Davy and Ms Dell'Agostino over the following weeks and months, she came to understand more about their perspectives on farming - from grain prices, to preserving bushland, the water table, the region's colonial history and how a changing climate was altering the environmental and social ecology.

She also interviewed 16 locals, visiting their homes and farms and asking general and specific questions such as their favourite place in Wellstead, local plant species and what they thought the region might look like in 50 years.

The interview subjects came from a range of backgrounds - from traditional farmers to those, such as Mr Davy, using regenerative techniques, others had diversified their farms into cut flowers.

"People weren't just into sheep, cereals and cattle and there was a focus on invasive and native plant species," she said.

There was also a rich vein of local history through the conversations.

"Many families are only the second generation since the land release at Wellstead,'' Ms Pedler said.

"People remember the land clearing.''

Ms Pedler meshed the interviews with images of local plants and flowers, a harvester in a paddock, canola cutting, farm animals and a wedge-tailed eagle, the burnt bark of trees, the beach where local kids learn to swim and the ever-present Stirling Ranges and South Coast.

"There is a small island off the coast and it figures quite clearly in a lot of the discussions,'' Ms Pedler said.

"Wellstead is not on the coast, but there are lots of roads that cut through, so people in Wellstead have a big connection to the ocean.

"They also see themselves as a bit of an island, as it is an isolated town."

Ms Pedler presented her stage-one work in February 2020 at a community gathering at Windi Windi, in which she projected videos onto the walls of the shearing shed and the inside and outside of the Nissen hut.

The community turned out in force, gathering to watch eight different video channels throughout the night.

"It was nice having people come together,'' she said.

"It was particularly beautiful projecting the images onto the curved walls of the hut.

"People sat on chairs and beds to watch it and they chatted, providing their own annotation.''

But a week later, along came COVID and its lockdowns and the residencies stopped.

Ms Pedler eventually returned to Windi Windi in August 2022, visiting with Juno and once with her husband Andrew, to test the waters for a return to the project.

"We stayed in the farmhouse to see how it would go with two babies in tow,'' she said.

She did more interviews - all included Juno and Ms Dell'Agostino and Esmae were in about two-thirds - so it became a natural conclusion to include the girls in the finished work.

"People talked about the future and what they hoped for the endemic plants and local environment, and they talked about their kids and grandkids,'' she said.

Her sculpture was modelled on a then 17-month-old Juno and 20-month-old Esmae lying before the homestead fire.

It was formed using commercial clay mixed with clay she pulled from a Windi Windi dam in August last year, wading in knee-deep with a bucket.

The clay was used to sculpt the girls' heads, hands and feet, and their bodies were stuffed with wool grown on the farm.

"The girls are now stuck in time to when we last visited,'' Ms Pedler said.

The images projected onto the white clay include hakeas and banksia heads, invasive species such as Sydney wattle, and trees endemic to the region.

"It is about the specifics of the plants and how people relate to them,'' Ms Pedler said.

"They talk about the impact of blue gum plantations on the environment and how they have changed the profile of the community.''

Ms Pedler presented her final work in the woolshed on October 29, in a collaborative exhibition that also included other work by Mr Davy, Ms Dell'Agostino and artists Joyce Hall, Margaret Gorman and Catherine Higham, who all have a connection to the region.

"The installations, prints, photographs, paintings and drawings all reflected a human relationship with the environment,'' said Ms Pedler, who has an eye on another future for that exhibition.

"I wanted to recognise the contributions other artists were also making to their community.

"I would like to present it again, whether that's in Perth or Albany.''