Kudos acknowledges and pays respect to the Gadigal and Bidjigal people of the Eora nation. They are the traditional custodians of the land Kudos operates on. We create, design, share, and exchange our work and knowledge on this important meeting place. We pay our respects to elders past and present and extend that respect to any First Nations people who engage with Kudos. This is and always will be Aboriginal land.
| I am a Swiss-Lebanese artist working on stolen Gadigal Land. My work
explores the human entanglement with the natural world in media such as
sculpture, printmaking and installation. My projects are informed by archival
and field research and lead to material experimentations within the natural
and cultural realm. I grew up in the luscious, mountainous landscapes of
Switzerland and gained a beautiful change of scenery, when I moved to the
tropical beaches of Sydney in 2018. This love for different landscapes,
environments, cultures and peoples informs my interests in the
improvement of different urban environments and dedicate my life to our
collective approach to the climate crisis. I am currently majoring in
Environmental Humanities, which strongly examines the interplay of
sociocultural factors that influence today's environmental and societal
complexities. To summarise my motivations and values, I agree with
Joseph Beuys, that art can have a healing effect on the artist, the audience
and the environment. I strongly believe that employing creative and artistic strategies in social, political and environmental realms can improve our
collective life on earth. @_landstricher_ |
| no green eden here, but a restless expanse of multihued contaminations Sarah Yaacoub, no green eden here, but a restless expanse of multihued contaminations [sculptural installation], 2024, found objects (pole, sign, garden hose, white board and two stands), screen- printed book on tarp, concrete, soil bag with cyanotype, variable. Curl Curl Lagoon's extensive history of pollution, extraction, and rehabilitation by white settler-colonizers has transformed the once lush wetland into a manicured 'green' space for active recreation. Toxic remnants from its past still linger. Warringah Council's efforts to purify these waterways include the construction of a gross pollutant trap in 1997, which has improved the lagoon's water quality. However, western aesthetics of nature and care have yet again caused further deterioration. This sculptural installation seeks to explore the absurdity of polluting the natural environments we inhabit, to uphold western narratives around aesthetics of nature and caretaking. My investigation is supported by archival and on-site research around Curl Curl Lagoon, as well as thinking with author Jeffrey Cohen, who challenges notions around "greenness" in environmentalism and art. The title of this body of work is a citation from his book "Prismatic Ecology". Old signs, plastics, poles, broken council equipment, are abundant around the lagoon and have become part of my work. I used screen-printing to reproduce imagery of herbicides used on the sports fields, maps of the lagoon and the gross pollutant trap. This specific information is interrupted by more subtle attempts using a chemical process called cyanotype, which employs light to expose more gestural images of and onto materials used by local council. |