STRATA
(2024)

Bankstown Biennale
Bankstown Arts Centre
(Nov 2024 - Feb 2025)
Sydney, Australia

Curator/s:
Coby Edgar, Jason Wing and Rachael Kiang

Strata is an installation that traces the marks of erosion on coastal ecologies. The work explores the idea of deep geological time in relation to human timescales. It draws on forms cast into sedimentary sandstone. These structures tell the story of water and wind, shaped by millennia of erosion and movement, epitomising nature’s unending cycle. Yet these natural systems, which have adapted over vast periods of time, contrast sharply with the human-induced climate emergency and its impact on these same coastal ecologies and communities.

In geology, strata are defined simply as a layer or series of layers of rock in the ground. But it can also refer to social strata, a level or class to which people are assigned according to their social status, education, or income.

The mirrored sculpted forms, explore the duality of contemporary human existence and question prevailing perceptions of our relationship with the natural world we inhabit.

For this project, Bae and Lawler conducted a series of field studies along Australia’s east coast, using 3D scanning technology to capture the undulating marks of erosion on these coastal ecologies. In this sense, the work becomes a commentary that interrogates the tensions within technological progress. Through this process, the resulting objects resist categorisation, neither wholly natural nor constructed, becoming artefacts of competing timelines, competing interests, and contradictory specimens of what both is and is not in this moment.

In playing with the idea of mirroring, Bae and Lawler question what is the original and what is the copy; what is true, and what is false. There is a duality in this work that speaks to the troubling role technologies play in mediating our existence, particularly when it comes to free and open discourse on environmental issues. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stated in 2022 that false information and the "politicisation of science" are key barriers to climate action, and that rhetoric from vested economic and political interests continues to undermine climate science.

In Strata, Bae and Lawler seek to reconcile the vastness of geological time with the rhythms of our everyday lives.

Strata was commissioned by the Bankstown Arts Centre for The 3rd Bankstown Biennale and presented at the Arts Centre in 2024-2025.

Installation detail, Strata, Bankstown Biennale, Bankstown Arts Centre, Sydney, Australia, 2024.

Installation view, Strata, Bankstown Biennale, Bankstown Arts Centre, Sydney, Australia, 2024.

Installation view, Strata, Bankstown Biennale, Bankstown Arts Centre, Sydney, Australia, 2024.

Installation detail, Strata, Bankstown Biennale, Bankstown Arts Centre, Sydney, Australia, 2024.

Installation view, Strata, Bankstown Biennale, Bankstown Arts Centre, Sydney, Australia, 2024.