Notation

A notation as a noun is a collection of related symbols that are each given a meaning and placed within a field of study or domain of knowledge. In the exhibition notation serves as a verb: to note, mark, or set down in a system of notation. Notation brings together Debra Dawes and artists from Numbulwar who work respectively in regional and remote Australia. Despite the vast distance between them they share an interest in the intertwining of daily experience, place and politics and translating these notes into artworks and/or actions.

Debra Dawes lives and works in the Upper Hunter Valley (NSW) and each day witnesses the devastation of farming communities into wastelands scarred by bleak open-cut coal mining, drought and lack of water and the ensuing extreme weather events. The artists working in Numbulwar on the Gulf of Carpentaria observe a thousand miles of mangroves dying and witness gyres of non-degradable plastic ghost-nets that kill or slowly starve marine life..