Celebration of Illawarra nature provides sensory smorgasbord

The community-led Illawarra Nature Festival has brought together hundreds of locals eager to celebrate the region’s natural environment through expert talks, drop-in workshops, music and artwork.

Program coordinator Alison Mellor said it had been "really special" to see so many at the celebration of environment at Port Kembla's Servo last weekend.

Included in the festival launch was a multi-sensory exhibition exploring the Illawarra lowland grassy woodlands, created by artists Kathryn Morgan, Nicole Smede, Eliza Maartensz and Penny Sadubin. Combining visual art, log rubbings, projected video and auditory soundscapes, the installation aimed to re-examine traditional cartography and offer new ways of connecting with the local environment.

The Illawarra Flame asked the artists and attendees about the impact of the festival: 

Kathryn Morgan, Penny Sadubin, Nicole Smede

Penny: “We wanted to present something different this year. This is the second time we've made an installation about the grassy woodland, and we wanted to start to think about its fragmentation… what's left and the reasons why it's in the situation that it's in. Being on the coastal plain, it's where everyone needs to live and where we have all of our infrastructure. But there are pockets and remnants, and we want to make people aware so that people can help bring it back and reconnect the remnants that remain."

Kathryn: "We've had some interesting conversations with people who came earlier who traced the maps with their fingers and pointed to places that they've individually cared for. We spoke to one amazing person who pointed to a place that she's been caring for over 30 years… weeding and just paying attention to it. A map can be useful in that way, showing a really big area,"

"Maps historically have been a tool for colonialism and for property, and that's one of the reasons why we wanted to map in other ways as well. Nicole's sonic mapping is a really important part of the entire idea of this tracing of a landscape."

Nicole: "It's another way to engage with the work. Not everybody is visual; some people are wired for auditory experiences. The recordings in the headphones offer a sonic map of what's visually displayed."

Kathryn: "Seeing Penny's rubbings of the logs – more and more they strike me as something very... well, there's violence and there's loss in that. We've created this place for people to feel comfortable, to experience the plants, and for their bodies to feel safe… and then right next to them, there are these to-scale, one-to-one renderings of trees being cut to actually address that disturbing reality.”

Penny: "Even though it's such a thin record, it actually shows you the dimension of a tree that once stood. When you compare it to these other plants, they have a presence that's different, reflecting so many years gone by."

Nicole: "These maps show the layers of history. A lot of maps erase history to put a new layer on top and then say, 'that's the truth.' These are kind of like an unveiling,”

"It's something that we live with every day and don't even notice…it’s important to pay attention because we don't miss what's gone if we don't know about it."

Alison Mellor

"The exhibition is really moving, I find it really fascinating to look at... we've got some tracings from some beautiful old trees, and I just love all of the way that the different elements come together to make it interactive.

"The artists have done an incredible job bringing all those different elements together to make it a really immersive experience, and really honouring and celebrating the Illawarra lowland grassy woodlands.

"We've had two speakers, so we just had David Finlay, he's got a packed-out crowd ... listening about fireflies and glow worms and bioluminescent ghost fungi, and everyone is just so captivated by what he's talking about."

Gee and Elissa

Gee: "I think it's beautiful. I really love the art exhibition. I think it totally encapsulates the grassy woodland, which is really pretty... Just so sensory... so moving, and even the smell from the [smoking ceremony] was just so beautiful,”

"I am a bush regenerator, so this is right up my alley. I love protecting the grassy woodlands... I knew that there'd be some like-minded people and just wanted to sort of learn anything and listen to other people and meet other people."

Elissa: "Whoever has put it on has done an amazing job and clearly tried to put on lots of different art stuff and the gallery and the talks."

Monisha and Lilith

Monisha: "I liked the cyanotype, and I really liked the exhibition, actually. Really cool exhibition. I had a good chat with the Growing Illawarra Natives person, and that seems like a really cool organisation. I'd love to grow some Illawarra natives."

Lilith: "I like nature... My friends put it in the groupchat and said they were going, so I was like, yeah, let's do that." 

Emma and Sharne

Emma: "Tonight we’ve come to see the installation. I didn't get to see it last year and I was really bummed, so I really wanted to make sure I got to see it tonight.

"I went to the Friends plot a little bit. I'm not at all good at gardening, but I took my kids and they really loved it, so I wanted to kind of see the next phase and also Nicole's sounds are amazing, and Penny's etchings are so beautiful.

"I was pretty surprised at how the work has been created from just essentially just people who love the woodlands... I think it's pretty amazing that all these people are just genuinely loving it and that's what's brought them to it."

Sharne: [Talking about laying down in the centre of the exhibition space, where guests were provided a viewing nook] "It was so nice. They'd started lighting up the smoking ceremony and so you could smell that. Laying there, you could see the lights in the trees, reflecting off it. And the maps were blowing my mind, I was trying to work out which parts of the Illawarra were there… what was and what is now is mind blowing.

"It's so nice to just have information about something that's so local, and tips to go out and actually enjoy the real thing as well."