Maluw Adhil Urngu Padanu Mamuy Moesik (Legends from the deep sitting peacefully on the waters)

Zenadh Kes (the Torres Strait Islands & surrounding seas) is experiencing climate crisis and urgent action is needed. The Torres Strait 8 are a collective who won a complaint against the Australian Government to the United Nations for failing to protect Zenadh Kes from climate damage, demanding that Australia reduce emissions, and immediately resource adaptation needs. This is the world’s first case of its kind.

For rīvus, the Torres Strait 8 were co-commissioned by the IMA and Biennale of Sydney to create a hybrid art-as-protest work led by Masig cultural practitioner Yessie Mosby. Yessie has carved a series of new totem poles from materials, pigments and fibres found on the Islands. The mythological totems share stories of ancestral beings in deep saltwater. These stories are interconnected with the current climate trauma the communities are experiencing; Mosby says, “we will be the first climate refugees in this country.” The collective’s participation magnifies the activism of the Our Islands Our Home campaign fighting for justice for the communities of Zenadh Kes and holding the Australian Government to account on climate change policy.

Find out more and act: ourislandsourhome.com.au

In this video, artist and community leader Yessie Mosby talks about his home Masig, a coral clay island in the Torres Strait, north of the Cape York Peninsula. Masig is slowly disappearing, submerged beneath rising sea levels. Mosby talks about the spiritual and mental toll of witnessing the destruction, explaining that a loss of his homelands equates to the end of customary cultural practices for his people. With the constant threat posed by climate change, life is characterised by fear for the future. Despite this, Mosby embodies the strength and resilience of his ancestors, and of Traditional Owners who continue to fight on behalf of their lands. This is an urgent call and warning, to critically examine our inaction around climate change, from a community experiencing its effects on the frontline.

“Every day I wake up, every morning I wake up, looking at my children, looking at my family. Looking at the surroundings of my home, my island...keeps me motivated. Keeps that fire burning. Listening to the laughter of our children keeps that fire burning. Knowing that what I am doing now is for their future. It’s not only for the future of the children of Masig, my children and the children of the village of Masig. I am doing this for my family, my clan, my tribe, my nation, and all saltwater people.” – Yessie Mosby

"The drawings tell of the struggles of two rivers in different parts of the world: the Soča River in Slovenia and the Lachlan River in Australia, in New South Wales. In the time of late capitalism and extreme environmental challenges, the rivers are threatened by plans that would exploit them to benefit the few. The characters in the drawings call for a more egalitarian relationship between humans and nature, in which the rivers are shared by all, to benefit the living world of plants, animals, and humans. New agreements bring hope for the future survival of our common world.

When working on the rīvus project, I met many inspiring individuals who are standing up for the Rights of Rivers and the Rights of Nature, while in the same breath they remind us of the natural empathy we feel towards rivers and our urgent obligation to be their caretakers. They include Andreja Slameršek, a Slovenian advocate for river rights, and Ray Woods, an elder of the Wiradjuri First Nation and a caretaker of the Lachlan River. Around the world I see environmentalists and Indigenous people taking the same stand. I am hopeful that more people will recognize their knowledge and adopt their practices in the effort to ensure a more resilient future for all of us. The drawings The Time on the Lachlan River and The Life of the Lachlan River were made in close collaboration with Uncle Ray Woods, a Wiradjuri elder, and Bernard Sullivan, who co-authored on the video Galari-dyi Bangamalagi – Sharing the Lachlan River.

The two visual essays, The Rights of a River and The Life of the Lachlan River, show us that the life of the rivers can be protected and revived by addressing imminent challenges. In Slovenia, citizens overturned a law that would have allowed private business to exploit protected rivers for profit, while the caretakers of the Lachlan River are trying to stop the raising of the wall on the Wyangala Dam, which would deprive the country below the dam of water. The fundamental challenge is to end the overexploitation of the natural world. For this to happen, people must stop seeing rivers as objects, to use, abuse, buy and sell, and start seeing them as relatives or friends. The drawings propose new agreements between humans and the natural world." – Marjetica Potrč

Please be advised that this work contains sexual content and is not suitable for children.

Zheng Bo’s installation presents the artist’s ongoing series Pteridophilia, an investigation into the politics of ferns. The works portray intimate encounters between young men and ferns in a forest in Taiwan, pushing the boundaries of sexuality and love to incorporate the natural world.

“Connecting queer plants and queer people, Pteridophilia explores the ecoqueer potential”, Zheng says. In one film we see a man make love to a bird’s nest fern (Asplenium nidus) and then eat it. In this scene, Zheng reflects “on our current moral outlook that it is ‘natural’ to eat plants but ‘unnatural’ to make love to them”. Noting that “Bird’s nest fern is a popular delicacy in Taiwan.” The artist's work is informed by queer ecology, which rejects nature as existing in binary states – for example, human or non-human, natural or unnatural. Instead, Zheng situates both communities of people and plants as subjects in their films, depicting scenes of physical intimacy between them and destabilising identity and gender categories.

The installation also includes a variety of living ferns and visitors are invited to spend time with them. Zheng has a daily practice of drawing plants, a meditative exercise that seeks to understand the plants’ perspectives, and to empathise with their ways of being in the world, their time frames, movements, and behaviours.

Why is it that objects which leave a geological mark lasting an epoch are so readily available, with prices not accounting for their enduring environmental burden?

We are living on a damaged planet.
There is hope in imagination — this work is a field trip to another world.

The outcome of an ongoing material research project, The Myth of Nature – agaG1 (V2) speculates on what it would mean if a global price on waste and environmental depletion was introduced. In doing so, it proposes an alternative to our species’ problem with single-use plastics and infrastructural ties to petrochemicals.

"The algae-based polymer developed and used in these works is made from organic materials. It can be completely recycled in a process as simple as boiling pasta, enabling reuse of 100% of the material without need for a high-energy recycling system. If disposed in the environment, the polymer degrades without risking the lives of other species. They are made of Athrospira platensis microalgae, the first organisms known to have produced oxygen on Earth, and which still produce between 50-80% of the oxygen in each breath we take. They are the oldest organism to be found in fossils and have existed on this planet for at least 3.5 billion years.” – Jessie French

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People are advised that this work contains voice recordings of people who are now deceased.

“The installation Imbás: a well at the bottom of the sea draws on the Story of Sinann, an Old Irish story/dindshenchas about the forming of the river Sinnan/Shannon. In the story, the woman Sinnan, a highly accomplished poet seeks imbás/inspiration. She journeys to a well at the bottom of the sea, surrounded by nine musical, magical hazel trees; there she draws imbás from the well in the form of bubbles released by the resident wise salmon, who chew on the hazelnuts fallen from the trees. This imbás/inspiration, previously jealously guarded by magicians is then released for the benefit of the community and forms the river Sinnan.

The connection between rivers, inspiration, poetry, truth-telling, and ecology is explored in this work. Nine cauldrons stand in for the nine hazel trees at the well; and research notes appear as text on silk fragments. Music and voices of poets and ecologists are combined in a complex sound work that runs the duration of the day.” – Clare Milledge

Duke Riley has always been interested in marine and riverine lore as well as stories of stowaways, naval battles, mutinous crews, island dwellers, and the life of individuals that often live at the verge of legality and the social norm.

Riley’s works for rīvus focused on the Newtown creek in Brooklyn, originally an estuary where pure spring water emptied into the East River. In 1950 it became the site of the largest oil spill in U.S. history when a pipe burst, unsurpassed until the BP oil spill of 2010. It remains the second largest oil spill in the history of the U.S. The area has never been remediated and remains highly toxic with alarmingly high cancer rates in the surrounding communities.

In making this work, Duke Riley drew upon stories from the Newtown creek and the many people that illegally moor their vessels there. “In 2003 I sailed a 26’ dilapidated sloop into the [Newtown] creek and illegally tied it up to an abandoned bulkhead […] As days turned into years, other boats began to appear around me and continued to do so long past my departure from the creek in 2013. There are currently more than 30 derelict boats moored in the creek, mostly clustered together, with people living aboard full time. At first glance, the people that remain there are living out a romantic maritime dream […] In reality, for most this alternate existence is coupled with harsh winters without heat and a lack of plumbing, running water and basic amenities that many of us take for granted. The most notable downside is the continuous and potentially lethal exposure to a highly carcinogenic environment caused by living on top of a federal Superfund site. Most have no financial means to leave and live elsewhere but are constantly in fear of being told to leave in the middle of the night.” – Duke Riley

Seals’kin is a sonic and choreographic meditation on loss, longing, transformation and kinship, shot on location in coastal Aberdeenshire in Scotland. At the mouth of the river Ythan, where the freshwater meets the North Sea, hundreds of grey and common seals haul out on the estuary banks. Here, Tuulikki explores with her body what it might mean to become-with-seal, drawing on myths of human-seal hybridity and folkloric musical practices to offer alternative forms of mourning through sensuous identification with more-than-human kin.

"In Scottish folklore, mythical seal people known as selkies are said to shed their sealskins and step from water as humans, until mysteriously disappearing back to sea. Perhaps selkie stories of loss and longing helped to alleviate the feelings of sorrow brought on by a sudden death in the community, or from relatives lost at sea. Musical practices of singing to or with seals may have maintained a felt connection with the dead through the fostering of kinship with seals and selkies, thought by some to be the souls of the departed. But as folkloric coping mechanisms for grief, how might these stories and songs help us to come to terms with the collective and personal tragedies of the present pandemic? And furthermore, how might they help us to navigate the sorrow of ecological or climate grief?" – Hanna Tuulikki

Casino Wake Up Time is a collective of Bundjalung and Kamilaroi women who have been meeting and weaving for over ten years. The members are Auntie Janelle Duncan, Auntie Margaret Torrens, Theresa Bolt and Kylie Caldwell, based in Casino. This work originally created for rīvus represents countless hours of harvesting and picking natural fibres on Bundjalung wetlands, rivers and along roadsides, processing and splitting fibres, and weaving collectively in a pandemic. Casino Wake Up Time are leading Aboriginal contemporary weaving into new and abstract forms. The woven objects on cast iron frames represent stories of riparian zones, freshwater flow, kinship of plants, and revitalisation of women’s cultural weaving practices. The fibres important to Bundjalung weaving are Buchie rushes, Bullrush, and Lomandra grass; aquatic and riparian vegetation that are essential protectors in supporting healthy freshwater.

The bed frames suggest dormitory beds from violent colonial practices of removal and the paternalistic slumber state of society, government, and industries regarding actions to care, protect and restore our freshwater systems. Kylie Caldwell says, “it is a domestication of acceptance, the complacency of freshwater care, and negligence prevalent in our society. We need to show up and take care of these waterways!”