Hanging, Holding, Lifting and Folding unfolds from Christine Collins’ long connection to the silver, lead and zinc mining town of Broken Hill. Having grown up in the town, it wasn’t until a recent residency that the astonishing confluence of industry, community and bush, overlooked by its familiarity, came into focus.
The Broken Hill townscape is dominated by huge skimp dumps, poppet heads and mining infrastructure. A monumental black slag heap, located behind the town square, is within 100 meters of civic buildings and homes. Bush persists amongst it all. Although mining brought wealth, a Miners’ Memorial sits atop the slag heap, signaling sacrifice, lost lives, environmental destruction and dispossession.
Hanging, Holding, Lifting and Folding responds with forms distilled from archetypal symbols of sacrifice, loss and survival: pieta, crucifix and resurrection. The works adopt geometric industrial shapes and materials alongside organic forms observed in geological mineral formation, natural minerals and landscape.