Basalt Study features archival material, photography, video and text examining the history of the basalt ledge that once spanned the width of the Birrarung. Stretching from each side of the riverbank, the ledge was often used as a bridge and provided a natural barrier between freshwater and saltwater. In the late 1800s, the rock from the basalt ledge, or “the falls” as it was known post-invasion, was dynamited and extracted to line the nearby Coode Canal, damaging the river’s ecology. Basalt Study aims to bring the violence of the colonial regime to the attention of other settlers by offering another way of thinking about the river beyond extractive terms.
Basalt Study forms part of Christine McFetridge’s creative practice PhD project: An Inconvenient Curve: Unlearning Settler Colonial Representations of the Birrarung.
This project has been made on unceded Boon Wurrung, Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung and Wadawurrung Country by McFetridge, a settler coloniser from New Zealand. The artist pays her deep respect to their Ancestors and Elders past and present. Always was, always will, be Aboriginal land.