Where there is wind (there will be dust)
2023 - 2024
Where there is wind (there will be dust), 2024
2-channel video
05:15 mins
Where there is wind (there will be dust) is a new video work (in progress) that came out of a residency in the Murray region (NSW and VIC) as part of Parched: Cultures of Drought – a research project exploring how people and communities have lived through and managed drought over time and in different regions.
Where there is wind looks at the ways in which we are all connected through dust. Dust is picked up and carried through the air, traversing state boundaries, and permeating everything in its wake. In a way, dust contains memories and evidence of action and inaction. When collected, stored, and studied, dust can reveal information about who we are and how we live. The particles contained within, recorded in data sets, show us our past, present, and potential future.
Lake Hume, 2023
Photogravures
I've lived through many seasons of drought.
Seasons of drought are associated with shortage of water and hot weather, maybe dust storms and searing heat.
Those things sort of go in a pattern.
They have peaks and then after those peaks there comes a cool off.
Cool patterns of weather, sometimes rain.
Sometimes your drought can be right in the wintertime when it's cold, but you will have very light or no rain at all.
In those months where we are needing rain, which is through the winter and into spring,
they are the focal points of how a drought begins.
If you miss those rains in the spring, they don't complete the cycle of finishing your crops.
They don't come to their full bounty.
It's often the year after the drought that is the hard year.
We don't hear it so much in the news because we're all so glad it's rained,
but it's then those pressures that come on us.
Where's the next dollar coming from?
People talk about the black dog.
I think it's the year after the drought that it comes.
You can just see by how bare the ground is.
Any strong wind will create dust.
There were whirlwinds.
Where there is wind there is dust.
Our house was very not very well sealed, so it would go right through the house.
We spent a lot of money putting in better sealed windows.
One day, in 2008, there was this strange, like, not dust.
Dust would normally envelop things, but the whole sky just went brown.
It got darker and darker. At 2:00 in the afternoon.
It nearly blotted out the whole sky.
And yet I wasn't enveloped in it.
I've never seen anything like that.
High strong winds and gusts of dust.
Get the clothes off the line.
It's going to pass within a few hours.
Interview with Graeme Wenke, Farmer, Walla Walla, NSW, 2023
