Exhibition Essay: Reef – Captured Moments of Hope and Resilience

Harriet Spark and Richard Woodgett

Sydney Road Gallery, 563 Sydney Road, Seaforth.

Launch Event: 3pm - 6pm, Saturday 2nd March

28th Feb – 24th of March.

Words by Emma-Kate Wilson

The climate is on everyone’s mind at the moment, with action or no action as very much part of the conversation. While politicians completely disrupt their environment, arguing and debating, all with a lack of sustainable engagement. Every week we see the news headlines flair up with a new climate-based disaster, yet the blame game continues, and neither political party will take the responsibility needed to tackle the great big beast looming over us. However, as we consider the lack of action and policy, creatives are emerging out into the Anthropocene to disrupt and dismantle what you know; or more importantly what you should know about climate change, global warming, and sea levels rising.

One couple of creative minds, based in the scenic home of Manly, are bringing together an exhibition that exploits the medium of photography. Harriet Spark and Richard Woodgett, who fittingly met while working as divers out on Australia's Great Barrier Reef, are showing a collection of their favourite images from their time out in one of the wonders of the world. ‘Reef - Captured Moments of Hope and Resilience’ at Sydney Road Gallery will invite the audience into the artists private diving world, as they show their love of the planet’s biggest living organism. These images are stunning recollections of coral, turtles, fish, existing and surviving in one of Australia’s national treasures.

With photography, there is an ability to tear apart perspectives, for as long as this medium has existed, it has been changing people’s awareness of fact and fiction. The artistic methodologies that are absorbed into the artworks are just as critical as the subject matter. The light, the angle; the reveal of a piece of history. But for a beautiful image to hold a responsibility to its audience, it has to offer something back. For Spark and Woodgett, the critical message from the exhibition is that the reef is surviving. It’s alive and well, and more importantly, something worth disrupting an industry that a few Australians seem to have a problem with.

Aesthetically ‘Reef’ fits into the contemporary art world, Sydney Road Gallery is the perfect white cube for the artworks. Light beams in through the large windows facing out into its cosy home in Seaforth on the Northern Beaches. In the window, oversized artworks of 100cm x 150cm will invite the passerby into the gallery. In one part documentary artwork, one part decorative piece, one an interior designer would love for their client's walls, or a perfect gift to an ocean lover. Huge sea turtles ask you to buy them, the other with little blue fishes, bright like neon, moving through a living, breathing reef.

However, the layers run more profound than the aesthetic value of the photographs. For the turtle’s mug shot - framed by his big blue ocean home and a healthy abundance of seagrass and algae from the reef to nibble at - is titled "I think the climate change science is far from settled." The Honourable Tony Abbott (2019); or the tranquil setting of fish swimming through pearly coral is named "This is coal, don't be afraid, don't be scared. It won't hurt you. " Prime Minister Scott Morrison (2019). The first response is humorous and ironic, yet highlights in the most terrifying way - the absurdity of our current political situation. As the coal industry continues to threaten this delicate ecosystem, we need more artists like these to bring attention to what we could lose.

This exhibition holds a deep connection to Spark, in the most poetic sense, the reef was there for her when she needed saving, battling personal traumas in her own life. A move up to the Queensland sunny coast, with its dazzling 1000km stretch of Great Barrier Reef, gave her a love of diving. She said, “The first scuba dive was amazing, and left me dreaming about it.” This chance encounter to experience something new led her to meet Woodgett, and join the Green Army, to remove crown-of-thorns starfish from the coral reef who threaten the ecosystems. Back in Sydney, it was the grassroots effort to clean up beaches and raise money for charities like AYCC. Now through conservation, local action groups such as Operation Straw which not only removes straws from Manly cove but fights huge organisations and their continued use of plastic, and her “conservation through creative communication” design agency Grumpy Turtle Designs Spark and Woodgett are saving the reef, as it saved her. 

The figures are collected, and after the Paris Climate Agreement in 2016, which saw 195 countries agree to keep temperature increase to 1.5C below pre-industrial levels, with catastrophic effects if this number reaches 2C. The Reef is particularly sensitive to these figures, if temperatures reach 1.5C we will see a decline of between 70% and 90%. If global warming reaches 2C, more than 99% of coral reefs are projected to decline. But, this is the year of hope. The Reef has so much more life left. The artists are bringing awareness of these numbers, and the stark differences between politicians and the public, but also donating 10% of the profits of sold artworks to the Australian Youth Climate Coalition. This organisation brings young people together to protest and call on the politicians who won’t listen to climate facts, we need to move away from fossil fuels to avoid losing the Reef completely. They are empowering the next generation to make sure history is not written for them, but by them.

Joining Harriet Spark and Richard Woodgett is Tim Flannery to open the exhibition. Flannery is also working with Zali Steggall in the election race for the gallery’s, and artist’s, home constituency of Warringah. Challenging the politician who helped name many of the artworks in the exhibition, such as the two manta rays swimming over the bright blue ocean floor, titled: "The climate change argument is absolute crap..." The Honourable Tony Abbott (2019).