A Review of The Soil’s Project at TarraWarra Museum of Art

Written By Dee Ogilvie

  • My name is Dionne (Dee) Louise Ogilvie, and I am a settler-coloniser with English, Scottish and Danish ancestry. I am an artist and student living, working, and exploring my practice on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri Woiwurrung peoples of the Kulin nations. I pay my deepest respects to their elders past, present and emerging and acknowledge them as the traditional custodians of the land on which I am incredibly privileged to reside. I would like to extend my respect to First Nations People who read the following exhibition review and to the traditional custodians of lands from where my readers are accessing this work.

    I recognise that as a privileged cis white woman that I have immense work ahead of me to unlearn internalised colonial mindsets and decolonise areas of my life and practice as an artist. In the wake of the disheartening result of Australia saying No to the referendum to establish a First Nations Voice to Parliament - it is obvious that there is much work to be done to dismantle the racist structures that continue to subjugate and disenfranchise our vulnerable First Nations Peoples. It is my responsibility as a settler-coloniser to listen to Indigenous voices, to decolonise and equip myself to be able to have difficult and transformative conversations that I will surely encounter.

    The following exhibition review was written through this lens. I have chosen to centre my discussion on the works of First Nations artists and collectives exhibited in The Soils Project to deepen my understanding around their connection to land and feelings surrounding the ongoing effects of colonisation.

‘We contain inescapable intimacy with earth and dust. We are made up of earth.’

- Gustafson (2023:28)


Earth, clay, dust, loam.

Soil is ubiquitous. It is a living, breathing entity full of mineral, material, and organic complexity. Soil is both ancient and new, composed of old, weathered rock and decaying organic matter. Its layers tunnel through time, carrying history and story in its material and metaphorical composition. I have fond memories of playing in the dirt as a child. Humans share this innate need to have intimacy with earthen materials that we're so in touch with as children. And while this urge to connect with soil may wane into adulthood, it remains deeply interwoven in our collective daily lives and cultural practices. The emergence of life from clay is a commonly shared creation myth. Compellingly, scientific research has validated this idea, indicating that clay acted as a catalyst in the formation of Earth’s earliest organisms (Montgomery 2012). Without soil, we may never have come to be - we come from it, and, in the end, return to it.

The Soils Project at TarraWarra Museum of Art (Healesville, Wurundjeri Country) is a life-affirming exhibition that sets out to examine this intrinsic human relationship with soil and the landscape. In development since 2018, The Soils Project is the outcome of an ongoing research-based collaboration between TarraWarra, Struggles for Sovereignty (Yogyakarta, Indonesia) and the Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven, The Netherlands). The project has culminated from various iterations including a series of webinars entitled The Soils Project: Groundwork (2022) and a workshop held over two weeks on Wurundjeri Country, The Soils Project: On Country (2022). The collaboration has since materialised into a transglobal arts project bringing together the ideas of thirteen diverse collectives, arts practitioners and curators exploring the materiality of soil and our collective metaphorical connection to it (Lynn 2023). While the association is not immediately clear, the three participating countries have complex and interrelated histories of colonisation. The artists traverse the widespread colonial impacts of mining and global industry on Indigenous peoples and the environment and elevate the importance of understanding traditional knowledges and practices in stewarding the land (The Soils Project: Essays 2023). The Soils Project serves as a platform to exchange conversations between the coloniser and the colonised and to share the diverse ways of knowing and caring for soil in all its complexity.

Upon entering the exhibition space, I’m engulfed by the expanse before me and am struck with an initial sense of vacuity. There is an air of pretentiousness about this space, and I find myself judging the immense privilege and excess wealth that has been injected into the gallery’s establishment. The architecture is grand and spacious with towering ceilings. The length of the exhibition stretches out on the right, partitioned by wall space with a looped back, light-filled hallway to the left. Standing in this space, I reflect upon the history contained in the earth beneath this megalith of a building and imagine what once lay here. The building itself is a glaring beacon of colonisation.

Figure 1: Peta Clancy birrarung ba brungergalk 2023, photographic installation: photomurals and inkjet pigment prints mounted on dibond. Prints: 150 x 100 cm and 150 x 115.8 cm; photomural 353 x 1744 cm, Installation view, The Soils Project, TarraWarra Museum of Art, 2023.
Courtesy of the artist and Dominik Mersch Gallery, Sydney. Photo: Andrew Curtis.


My judgement dissipates as I am drawn into the exhibit by the warmth and luminescence of Bangerang artist Peta Clancy’s photographic installation birrarung ba brungergalk (see Figure 1). A series of photographic landscape prints are displayed against a photomural backdrop. The contrast allowing the works to appear as though they are lit from within. Clancy’s site-specific practice sees her work performatively with place, visiting a site and showing photographs to Country that she previously captured there. She then recaptures the photographs on Country, thereby examining poetic notions of passing time in place and honouring of the ancient landscape (Clancy 2023). Created in dialogue with Wurundjeri Traditional Custodians, birrarung ba brungergalk documents the convergence of the Birrarung (Yarra) and Brungergalk (Watts) rivers in Healesville. The confluence marks a place of significance for the Wurundjeri, however, since colonisation and the dispossession of their lands, the site is no longer freely accessible to their people. The light emanating from Clancy’s works illustrates these mud-laden waterways as golden and shimmering, exemplifying their continued cultural wealth and significance to Traditional Owners.

The works are installed against a hand-coloured photomural background reproduction of Nicholas Caire’s photograph, Junction, Yarra, and Watts Rivers (c. 1910-1915). Caire was a settler-coloniser whose photographic practice centred on the postcard picturesque (MAPH 2023). This installation gesture presents the landscape viewed through the lens of Indigeneity juxtaposed with the possessive colonial lens; one intent on objectification, extraction, and exertion of control over the environment. This summons important questions around Indigenous land rights and illuminates the diverse perspectives and ways of knowing place and landscape.

These ancient river systems carry with them soil and clay, depositing sediments as the water flows and carves its way through time. Clancy’s exploration of deep time and shallow time in place illuminates the histories and stories held within the landscape and its waterways. I depart from the work feeling deeply moved, with a lingering impression of the artist’s nostalgic yearning for the healing of Country.

I continue to the adjacent installation - an open, aesthetically minimalist space with soft, directional lighting. The breadth of the room is occupied by a series of metal and wooden bar stools organised in a crescent, each casting shadow in dual directions. The stools each have an image atop them resembling bark or tree rings in various earthen colours and inscribed with place names in cursive writing. The work is a collaboration between Quandamooka artist Megan Cope and Goan artist Keg de Souza, entitled Soil Stories of Coranderrk (see Figure 2) using the scientific method of soil chromatography. Russian botanist Mikhail Tsvet developed this alternative photography technique to assess the material, chemical and microbial composition of soils (Hunter 2023). Cope and de Souza gathered soil samples for the work from historically significant sites throughout Coranderrk Station with guidance from members of the Wandin Family. To process these samples, the soil solution was wick-fed via capillary action into silver nitrate paper and developed under natural sunlight. The resulting image distributes the soil’s material composition from heaviest at the centre, to lightest at the outer edges forming distinct rings (ACM SIGCHI 2022). The presence of spiked edges in the rings signifies increased complexity in the soil’s makeup.

Figure 2: Megan Cope and Keg de Souza, Soil Stories of Coranderrk 2023 with Brooke Wandin and Megan Cope, biiknganjinu ngangudji – see our Country 2023 installation view, The Soils Project, TarraWarra Museum of Art, 2023. Courtesy of the artists and Milani Gallery, Brisbane.


In Soil Stories of Coranderrk, Cope and de Souza are interested not in depicting scientific data, but the diverse stories and histories of place held within soil. Metaphorically, the spiked rings generated by the soil’s chemistry portray the complexity and diversity of cultural memory that emanates from the Coranderrk site. The spreading of the soil solution across the silver nitrate paper narrates these stories, resulting in what the artists term ‘earth maps’ (TarraWarra 2023), as seen on the stool in Figure 3. These stories reveal the deep, ancient time of the earth, shallow time of recent history, and present, superficial time. To amplify its site-specificity, the work is installed against the backdrop of a hand-drawn map charting the expanse of Wurundjeri country entitled biiknganjinu ngangudji – see our country (see background in Figure 2), a collaboration between Megan Cope and Brooke Wandin. This map of Country, in which Coranderrk is situated, allows the viewer to locate themselves within the landscape.

The deliberate use of stools in Soil Stories of Coranderrk suggests a sitting in place, evoking a sense of belonging and connection to Country for Traditional Custodians. The work is poignant, and as a settler-coloniser evokes feelings of deep respect for the land I am standing upon.

Figure 3: Megan Cope and Keg de Souza Soil Stories of Coranderrk 2023, chromatography paper, silver nitrate, various soil samples from Coranderrk selected and sourced with the guidance of Wandin Family members, glass and metal, 11 parts; 33 cm diam. each, Installation view, The Soils Project, TarraWarra Museum of Art, 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Milani Gallery, Brisbane. Photo: Andrew Curtis.


Bookending the exhibition are a series of large painted works with slabs of earthy colour on heavily creased paper. The installation of the works on paper are echoed with paintings expressed directly upon nearby windows and sections of wall. This striking installation entitled As I remember it (The Soils Project), as seen in Figure 4, is by arts practitioner D Harding (a Bidjara, Ghungalu and Garingbal descendant). Harding regularly uses raw, earthen materials in their practice, working with naturally harvested pigments and plant-derived gums and resins (TarraWarra 2023). The paint pigments are rich, earthen colours of yellow ochre, burnt sienna and umber, contrasting vividly with the stark white walls of the gallery. Harding’s intent is to bring the colours of Country into the exhibition space, connecting the viewer with the land they’re upon. The works exude an energetic quality through Harding’s gestural and expressive mark-making, allowing the gritty texture and tonality of the soil pigments to remain the focus.

Harding has generated a previous iteration of this work painting with earth pigments and resins harvested from their ancestral lands in central Queensland. In As I remember it, however, Harding has sought to place the local at the forefront of their work, before addressing the non-local (themself being a visitor on Wurundjeri Country). Harding sought out guidance from the Wandin Family on the use of local materials and processes to honour the history and practices of Wurundjeri Peoples (TarraWarra 2023a). In a video interview with TarraWarra, Harding emphasises the importance of listening to local First Nations Peoples on their knowledges and ways of caring for soil and seeking out permission to gather materials as a visitor on Country. To invite collaboration into their work, Harding engaged Brooke Wandin to paint ochre pigment upon the windows and walls (TarraWarra 2023b). This gesture is an act of solidarity between Indigenous peoples from diverse cultural and ancestral groups and further supports Harding’s desire to uplift the local.

Upon the windows, ochre pigment mixed with gum gives the impression of stained glass and the light pouring in emphasises the brushstrokes and their grittiness. Peering out to the sprawling landscape over the top of this painting creates a poetic sensation of reverence for the Country that TarraWarra sits upon. I recognise that the land has been manicured by colonial activity and is far removed from what it once was. The view is mesmerising, and a vivid reminder of the vast and changing histories held within the landscape.

Figure 4: D Harding As I remember it (The Soils Project) 2023, installation view. Earth pigments and gum acacia on 200gsm Fabriano Accademia paper (5 sheets, each 150 x 200 cm) and painting on walls and windows, dimensions variable. The Soils Project, TarraWarra Museum of Art, 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Milani Gallery, Brisbane. Photo: Andrew Curtis.


Upon leaving the exhibition, my earlier perceptions of TarraWarra Museum of Art as a colonial institution return to mind. I ponder upon the responsibility of settler-colonisers to use their privilege as a platform to empower and elevate the voices of disenfranchised peoples. Is it possible for such an institution to do so without centring the narrative around their benevolent efforts? TarraWarra does appear to be doing the work here, investing in the cultivation of collaborative partnerships with Traditional Custodians and consulting the local Wandin family extensively on works throughout the exhibition. Getting this right is a complex and nuanced issue. However, the powerful conversations and narratives generated through collaboration in The Soils Project are what’s needed to fuel discourse around reconciliation and decolonisation.

Overall, The Soils Project is a deeply immersive and engaging exhibition, weaving together the diverse fibres of Indigenous knowledge and colonisation to create a tapestry of complex narratives. I believe that the works exhibited by First Nations Peoples should be essential viewing for all Australian settler-colonisers. They speak to the importance of seeking out the ancient knowledge of Traditional Custodians on how to care for Country and steward the land. Each artwork serves as a profound lesson, encouraging the viewer to contemplate their personal connection with soil and the environment. Rediscovery of this connection is necessary to find commonality, to build community and begin healing the planet and humankind.




The Soils Project ran from August 5 to November 12 2023 at TarraWarra Museum of Art, Healesville.

  • ACM SIGCHI (13 June 2022) ‘Relating to Soil: Chromatography as a Tool for Environmental Engagement’ [Video], SIGCHI (Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction), YouTube website, accessed 3 October 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlObabEVJVg

    Clancy P (2023) birrarung ba brungergalk 2023, Peta Clancy’s website, accessed 29 September 2023. https://www.petaclancy.net/work#/new-page-72/

    Clancy P (2023) birrarung ba brungergalk [photographic installation: photomural and inkjet pigment print mounted on dibond], Peta Clancy’s website, accessed 29 September 2023. https://www.petaclancy.net/work#/new-page-72/

    Cope M & Souza K (2023) The Soils Project [print exhibition label], 5 August 2023 – 12 November 2023, TarraWarra Museum of Art, Healesville.

    Gustafson H (2023) Book of Earth: A Guide to Ochre, Pigment, and Raw Color, Abrams, New York, USA

    Harding D (2023) The Soils Project [print exhibition label], 5 August – 12 November 2023, TarraWarra Museum of Art, Healesville.

    Hunter (2023) Soil Chromatography, Cargo Collective website, accessed October 3 2023. https:// cargocollective.com/scotthunter/Soil-Chromatography

    Lynn V (2023) ‘Journeys and Situations’, The Soils Project: Essays, 1:13-24

    MAPH (Museum of Australian Photography) (2023) Nicholas Caire, Museum of Australian Photography website, accessed 2 October 2023. https://maph.org.au/artists/49/

    Montgomery D R (2012) Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, 2nd edn, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

    TarraWarra Museum of Art (12 October 2023) ‘D Harding (Bidjara, Ghungalu and Garingbal) speaks about soil in…’ [Instagram post], TarraWarraMA, accessed 16 October 2023. https://www.instagram.com/p/CySqNkFS8jE/

    TarraWarra Museum of Art (30 August 2023) ‘D Harding makes artworks from the raw natural materials available…’ [Instagram post], TarraWarraMA, accessed 10 October 2023. https://www.instagram.com/p/CwkFKFfMISs/

    The Soils Project: Essays (2023) ‘Foreword’, The Soils Project: Essays, 1:5

Dee Ogilvie