James Geurts - Floodplain

'Floodplain' illuminates the ongoing tension between nature and culture embodied by Australia's Yarra River. The floods that Melbourne periodically experiences are physical manifestations of the profound lack of understanding that European settlers had of the river before they set about altering and developing it. Through a practice involving field research, archival material, site-specific interventions, and works on paper, James Geurts examines how the river has been dammed, widened, straightened, and rerouted, its banks encased in concrete and its marshlands covered. His project emphasises the dynamics of the ancient river and its turbulent relationship with colonisation.