Margaret Roberts LIFE4COAL 2015, piled black tulle netting cut-outs, in Instruments of Democracy, a project by the Williams River Valley Artists' Project for Cementa15.

Photo: Jessica Maurer.

Each tulle cut-out is the shape of a bird, animal, reptile or insect that is locally or generally vulnerable and further threatened by mines such as the Maules Creek mine being constructed by Whitehaven Coal in the Leard State Forest. Shapes are taken from found photographs of a Barking Owl, a Bathurst Copper Butterfly, a Black-chinned Honeyeater, a Black-necked Stork, a Black-striped Wallaby, a Border Thick-tailed Gecko, a Brown Treecreeper, a Brush-tailed Rock Wallaby, a Bush Stone Curlew, a Corben’s Long-eared Bat, a Diamond Firetail, an Eastern Bent-wing Bat, an Eastern Cave Bat, two Gang Gang Cockatoos, a Gilberts Whistler, a Glassy Black Cockatoo, a Grey-crowned Babbler, a Grey headed Flying Fox, a Hooded Robin, a Koala, a Large-eared Pied Bat, a Little Eagle, a Little Pied Bat, a Little Lorikeet, a Littlejohns Tree Frog, a Mallee Fowl, a Masked Owl, a Painted Honeyeater, a Pale-headed Snake, a Pilliga Mouse, a Powerful Owl, a Regent honeyeater, a Satin Flycatcher, a Speckled Warbler, a Spotted Harrier, a Spotted-tailed  Quoll, a Square-tailed Kite, a Squirrel Glider, a Stuttering Frog, a Turquoise Parrot, a White-throated Needletail, a Rainbow Bee-eater, a Southern Longfaced Bat, a Superb Parrot, a Swift Parrot, a Wallaroo, a Yellow-bellied Glider, a Yellow-bellied Sheathtail Bat and a Varied Sittella.

The black tulle makes each cut-out resemble the shadow of a threatened bird, animal, reptile or insect, and when piled on top of each other in one spot, the accummulated shadows resemble the coal that is pushing them towards extinction.

LIFE4COAL is part of the Williams River Valley Artists' Project Instruments of Democracy 2015 (in Cementa15) that includes individual works by each artist in WRVAP, as well as a collaborative performance titled Instruments of Democracy that bears witness to the courage, ingenuity, discipline and stamina of environmental activists—from all walks of life—who oppose the terrible impacts of open-cut and long wall coal mining, and CSG/fracking.

LIFE4COAL is also to be shown at Coorah Contemporary Art Gallery as part of Reductive Response, a group project curated by Billy Gruner and Beata Geyer, open May - June 2015, 9-4pm Mon-Fri, with opening event Saturday 13 June 2015. (Coorah Contemporary Art Gallery, Blue Mountains Grammer School, Matcham Ave., Wentworth Falls, NSW.)