Bonita Ely's guest appearances

Bonita Ely

Art Guide Australia Podcast

National Gallery of Australia | Audio Tour | The National Sculpture Prize and Exhibition 2005

OwlTail

“I decided that art essentially is a communication, so my basis of my work is conceptual,” says artist Bonita Ely, a pioneer in environmental art in Australia, in our latest episode of The Long Run, a podcast talking with artists who have 60-year practices.Known for her sculpture, installations and performance art, Ely’s work is considered ground breaking, particularly through her feminist and environmentally driven works.  She’s an often-cited influence for many environmental artists, and her works have been exhibited at documenta 14, and collected by institutions like New York’s Museum of Modern Art.  Ely grew up in the rural Victorian town of Robinvale, and she spent time at the Murray River, the degradation of which would become a crucial topic in her art from the 1970s onwards. Her first major work relating to the river was the 1980 performance, Murray River Punch, which is a highly significant work that we talk through. Throughout the decades, her art has tracked severe ecological decline in across the Australian landscape.  Ely also discusses her upbringing, creating art at a young age, and the freedom her parents her gave her to pursue her interests. The artist also explains how she came to performance art, and the role of trauma in her work at levels personal, ecological and political. Finally Ely talks through her role in Australia’s feminist art movement, and her idea of art as a catalyst.This series is kindly sponsored by Leonard Joel Auctioneers and Valuers, based in Melbourne and Sydney. Produced and presented by Tiarney Miekus, engineering by Patrick Telfer, and music by Mino Peric.

“I decided that art essentially is a communication, so my basis of my work is conceptual,” says artist Bonita Ely, a pioneer in environmental art in Australia, in our latest episode of The Long Run, a podcast talking with artists who have 60-year practices.Known for her sculpture, installations and performance art, Ely’s work is considered ground breaking, particularly through her feminist and environmentally driven works.  She’s an often-cited influence for many environmental artists, and her works have been exhibited at documenta 14, and collected by institutions like New York’s Museum of Modern Art.  Ely grew up in the rural Victorian town of Robinvale, and she spent time at the Murray River, the degradation of which would become a crucial topic in her art from the 1970s onwards. Her first major work relating to the river was the 1980 performance, Murray River Punch, which is a highly significant work that we talk through. Throughout the decades, her art has tracked severe ecological decline in across the Australian landscape.  Ely also discusses her upbringing, creating art at a young age, and the freedom her parents her gave her to pursue her interests. The artist also explains how she came to performance art, and the role of trauma in her work at levels personal, ecological and political. Finally Ely talks through her role in Australia’s feminist art movement, and her idea of art as a catalyst.This series is kindly sponsored by Leonard Joel Auctioneers and Valuers, based in Melbourne and Sydney. Produced and presented by Tiarney Miekus, engineering by Patrick Telfer, and music by Mino Peric.

The Long Run #10: Bonita Ely on art as a catalyst

“I decided that art essentially is a communication, so my basis of my work is conceptual,” says artist Bonita Ely, a pioneer in environmental art in Australia, in our latest episode of The Long Run, a podcast talking with artists who have 60-year practices.Known for her sculpture, installations and performance art, Ely’s work is considered ground breaking, particularly through her feminist and environmentally driven works.  She’s an often-cited influence for many environmental artists, and her works have been exhibited at documenta 14, and collected by institutions like New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Ely grew up in the rural Victorian town of Robinvale, and she spent time at the Murray River, the degradation of which would become a crucial topic in her art from the 1970s onwards. Her first major work relating to the river was the 1980 performance, Murray River Punch, which is a highly significant work that we talk through. Throughout the decades, her art has tracked severe ecological decline in across the Australian landscape. Ely also discusses her upbringing, creating art at a young age, and the freedom her parents her gave her to pursue her interests. The artist also explains how she came to performance art, and the role of trauma in her work at levels personal, ecological and political. Finally Ely talks through her role in Australia’s feminist art movement, and her idea of art as a catalyst.This series is kindly sponsored by Leonard Joel Auctioneers and Valuers, based in Melbourne and Sydney. Produced and presented by Tiarney Miekus, engineering by Patrick Telfer, and music by Mino Peric.

“I decided that art essentially is a communication, so my basis of my work is conceptual,” says artist Bonita Ely, a pioneer in environmental art in Australia, in our latest episode of The Long Run, a podcast talking with artists who have 60-year practices. Known for her sculpture, installations and performance art, Ely’s work is considered ground breaking, particularly through her feminist and environmentally driven works. She’s an often-cited influence for many environmental artists, and her works have been exhibited at documenta 14, and collected by institutions like New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Ely grew up in the rural Victorian town of Robinvale, and she spent time at the Murray River, the degradation of which would become a crucial topic in her art from the 1970s onwards. Her first major work relating to the river was the 1980 performance, Murray River Punch, which is a highly significant work that we talk through. Throughout the decades, her art has tracked severe ecological decline in across the Australian landscape. Ely also discusses her upbringing, creating art at a young age, and the freedom her parents her gave her to pursue her interests. The artist also explains how she came to performance art, and the role of trauma in her work at levels personal, ecological and political. Finally Ely talks through her role in Australia’s feminist art movement, and her idea of art as a catalyst. This series is kindly sponsored by Leonard Joel Auctioneers and Valuers, based in Melbourne and Sydney. Produced and presented by Tiarney Miekus, engineering by Patrick Telfer, and music by Mino Peric.

Folded and glued like free-standing ‘point of a sale’ advertisements, hundreds of crisp, white cardboard cut-outs make up the floor installation Bonsai landscape. The objects are precisely placed so they turn, robot-like, in strictly controlled conformity to each other. From one particular viewpoint the viewer sees a dense, miniature forest of repetitive, tree-like imagery; from the opposite view the folds create an intricate panorama of cloned geometry that transforms and shifts like a tonal animation as the viewer moves around the ensemble.There are three protagonists. Scattered throughout a forest of bonsai trees are images of an inscrutable rock in dialogue with a fire hydrant.Together the components inscribe a shape on the gallery floor, reminiscent of the monoculture of commercial forestry, configured to map the shape of the 2003 bushfires in and around Canberra.The bonsai image, nature fictionalised, is derived from a photograph of a grove of trees I noticed growing along a gully on a hillside in Utah, in the United States. The fire hydrant and rock are someone’s valiant attempt at ‘urban landscaping’ in a vast, desert-like car park nearby.Together these images suggest that, like Leonardo da Vinci’s stains on a wall, meaning or narrative can be ascribed to anything our imaginations care to interpret. They remind us that nature is an economic unit, a throwaway consumable. It is also culturalised, destructive, exoticised and metaphysical. It is a biological system that we inhabit as deluded animals, human frailty ‘in control’.Image: Detail

Folded and glued like free-standing ‘point of a sale’ advertisements, hundreds of crisp, white cardboard cut-outs make up the floor installation Bonsai landscape. The objects are precisely placed so they turn, robot-like, in strictly controlled conformity to each other. From one particular viewpoint the viewer sees a dense, miniature forest of repetitive, tree-like imagery; from the opposite view the folds create an intricate panorama of cloned geometry that transforms and shifts like a tonal animation as the viewer moves around the ensemble. There are three protagonists. Scattered throughout a forest of bonsai trees are images of an inscrutable rock in dialogue with a fire hydrant. Together the components inscribe a shape on the gallery floor, reminiscent of the monoculture of commercial forestry, configured to map the shape of the 2003 bushfires in and around Canberra. The bonsai image, nature fictionalised, is derived from a photograph of a grove of trees I noticed growing along a gully on a hillside in Utah, in the United States. The fire hydrant and rock are someone’s valiant attempt at ‘urban landscaping’ in a vast, desert-like car park nearby. Together these images suggest that, like Leonardo da Vinci’s stains on a wall, meaning or narrative can be ascribed to anything our imaginations care to interpret. They remind us that nature is an economic unit, a throwaway consumable. It is also culturalised, destructive, exoticised and metaphysical. It is a biological system that we inhabit as deluded animals, human frailty ‘in control’. Image: Detail