Recently Mark, Bjorn, Erica and Hayden got together and took an exciting step in their collaboration - the installation of the work at Bula Mirri farm. The sculpture looks over one of their new Keyline dams, the one that we traipsed across during the 'Art and Farming picnic' and remained achingly empty for so long due to the drought. As you can see, the dams have now received some healthy flows!
Justin Hewitson has made a beautiful video about the solar project and the artwork, take a look (and then read on below).
As it turns out, seeing the work in situ as you see in the video suddenly revealed to the team that it could function in a way the team hadn't anticipated. The sculpture will capture the sun’s energy and rainfall and provide shade to its own surrounding patch. But it will also power a pump that will bring water from the new dam to a small area of the property that can't be served by the Keyline dam system. Bula Mirri's new dams have been installed on the farm's topography to ensure the largest area of land possible can be irrigated 'passively', in other words, by taking advantage of the fact that water wants to run down hill. This has excluded one area that is too high in the landscape. But now, the artwork's solar energy-powered pump will allow that area to be fed in a manner that is beautifully in keeping with Erica's and Hayden's vision to only use natural energy cycles across the farm. Now that's great art we think!
