Window No. 6 CHARLES COOPER | Nurses Walk 4 May - 16 June
In his two part drawing Charles Cooper has rendered Nurses Walk, the lane leading to and from this window. He identifies the immediate past while anticipating the future of each viewer who passes. Offering a moment of pause caught between moments in time that encapsulate the reflective space of art.
Window No. 5 TONY TWIGG | Vibrafon 5 April - 3 May
Tony Twigg’s construction from a discarded bookcase considers a material presence and its corresponding absence. It is an enigma, which indicates that in absence something remains of a departed presence. It is the echo of the histories, short and long, that are ever-present in The Rocks/Tallawoladah.
Window No. 4 MARIE McMAHON | Toxic Blooms 9 March-4 April
The Plague, a scourge that ravaged Europe during the middle ages arrived here as part of a global pandemic in January 1900. Rats from ships docked in Sydney Cove/Warrane brought it ashore where the authorities rushed to counter the contagion by cleansing The Rocks of rats. More than a century later, Marie McMahon has rendered the Plague bacterium, as it would be microscopically examined in a petri dish. She celebrates the scientist’s view and offers a historic counterpoint to the efforts of todays cruise ships, berthed at the docks of the same cove to contain the 21stcentury pandemic, Covid 19.
Window No. 3 SANDRA WINKWORTH | Celestial Rocks
9 February - 9 March
Sandra Winkworth's work, Celestial Rocks, is a direct response to this place. During the haphazard early morning walks around The Rocks / Tallowoladah Sandra has gathered evidence of local domesticity, wildlife and of travellers of the day and of the night. In her studio, your litter is fashioned into opalescent celebration of the vernacular. It is the archaeology of now - of our being
11 JANUARY - 8 February
As Surveyor-General of New South Wales, Thomas Livingstone Mitchell mapped his explorations of eastern Australia. In a style that reflects both Aboriginal forms of painting and western art, Suzy Evans represents Mitchell's encounter with her people, the Gomeroi, on their land in 1831. This meeting saw two of Mitchell’s party killed and forced him to return to Sydney.
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7 DECEMBER – 9 JANUARY
Bearing Witness quotes Paul Keating’s 1992 Redfern speech. Written with Don Watson 30 years ago, the speech recognised the significant damage done to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples by colonisation. The Rocks/Tallowoladah is ground zero of First Contact. In this short quote from the speech, amplified as a neon light, the artists have created a personal expression of the hope for unity in the truth-telling that is happening now and is still to come. They, like us, are Bearing Witness.
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