Penny Dunstan
University of Newcastle
Penny Dunstan is a Newcastle based artist and agronomist working with land rehabilitation after open cut coal mining in the upper Hunter Valley. By employing analogue and digital photography, topographic and stratigraphic drawing and soil exploration she derives lived encounters with terraformed lands. Dunstan is a PhD candidate in Fine Art at the University of Newcastle. She is a member of the Australian Society of Soil Science and has exhibited her work at the Land Dialogues Conference in Wagga, the Rehabilitated Soils conference in Singleton and Curve Gallery in Newcastle. Recently, Dunstan participated in the Dark Mountain Anthropocene Base Camp in Devon UK and the Eden Project at a rehabilitated mine site in Cornwall UK. Earlier this year she was an artist-in-residence at Hill End NSW, where she worked with re-vegetated ex-goldmining landscapes. See pennydunstan.com
Abstract Pointy and Flatty: What two Cornish Alps can tell us about the interaction of human imagination and post mining landform. Cornwall (UK) landscapes are pock marked by china clay mine sites. Set up in the 1700’s, the kaolin mines continue to supply porcelain clay across the world. The changing post mining landscapes record progressive understandings about the stability of land form in post mining environments. In the 1960’s, mining technology produced steep sided hills known, with some irony, as the Cornish Alps. Pointy and Flatty are two important Cornish Alps just behind the village of St Dennis. So important to the town that they have become part of the village as delineators of town identity, even featuring as the school crest. In this paper I argue that rehabilitation isn’t just about overburden and stability of final form. Nor is it about the development of novel ecosystems in highly disturbed and unnatural landscapes. Final rehabilitation of landform is about relationships that build between people and land. By being conscious of design choices when constructing an environment it is possible to make a landscape that may become imbued with intimate meaning and perhaps even sacredness. It is not as hard as it sounds. I would like firstly to give an example of the power of land form in mine rehabilitation in Cornwall and then a local version, Rix’s Creek, where the principle has been understood intuitively. |
Presentation
Pointy and Flatty: What two Cornish Alps can tell us about the interaction of human imagination and post mining landform.
Presented on 30th March 2017 at the 7th Annual Best Practice Ecological Rehabilitation of Mined Lands Conference (2017)
| 9.15am___15_min__penny_dunstan_-_-__pointy_and_flatty-.pdf |
