Along with the Overwintering Project Print Portfolio, the exhibition featured works by CDU students and staff. These works explored themes associated with Darwin as an important site(s) for migratory waders/shorebirds. The concept of observations in the field informing narratives and visual art was a major theme. 

 

Work for the exhibition began with field trips to view the waders at three major roost sites around the shores of the Darwin environs. Then students and some staff visited the MAGNT wet and dry collections to make observations including examining the skins of waders in the collection.

 

The exhibition included video, soundscapes, sculpture, photography, painting as well as printmaking.

 

The works by Ian Hance, CDU artist-in-residence, along with those of other artists, particularly Lee Harrop and Nicolas Bullot, have the concepts of endangerment, absence and extinction as major themes. These works, that examine the threats to the waders along with their special requirements, formed the main nucleus in the Northern Editions Gallery. Along with a colourful plastic mobile by Korin Lesh that plays with shadowy coloured images cast along adjacent walls, works by Jane Anderson of waders constructed out of sewn remains of denim with a map of flightpaths of the waders were installed. 

 

Lee Harrop’s large photographs speak about absence, as well as the intersect of scientific data and art, as do Ian's sculptures. Lee and Ian also created a collaborative print. Nicolas' sound-scape of the tidal mangroves at East Point similarly evoked the flux or passage of the tide and the fauna (including man) that occupy that area.

 

Along the walls of the Printmaking Building, student works were exhibited along with prints from the Northern Edition collection representing both Indigenous and European perspectives regarding habitat.

 

Cathryn Vasseleu's video and soundscape As if One Bird is a major work that set the context within the print collection in the Nan Geise Gallery. Ian's large abstract steel sculpture was also in this gallery.