For more than 20 years, multi-disciplinary artist Carmel Cosgrove has explored the layered cultural and environmental histories of Melbourne’s western suburbs, observing how urban landscapes change over time, shaped by both human activity and nature.
Much of that observation and exploration has taken place a short walk from Cosgrove’s Yarraville home at the Stone Creek backwash under the West Gate Bridge.
And now, through the use of projection, video, photography and suspended elements, Cosgrove has reimagined and reconstructed one of the most polluted places in metropolitan Melbourne for her new exhibition ‘This is Now’ which opens on 19 February.
The exhibition at Outside Gallery features 11 images of the backwash, the West Gate Bridge and the nearby Hyde Street Reserve that reveal their history, pollution, decay and resilience, while also inviting viewers to pause, reflect and see the landscapes in a new way.
“That backwash is loaded with quite a bit of history and industrial history,” Cosgrove said of why she was drawn to the place where Stony Creek empties into the Yarra River and where dozens of workers were killed when the West Gate Bridge collapsed during construction in 1970.
“It’s not the most glamorous area, it’s quite polluted, but it keeps pulling me back in.”
The ‘This Is Now’ exhibition will be launched next Thursday at the Newport Bowls Club, next door to the Outside Gallery where Cosgrove’s work will be displayed until September.
Details: www.artandindustryfestival.com.au
