The Tidal Collective is nine Brisbane-based artists who come together to research and collaborate on issues and themes relevant to our local environment. During 2019 we have been investigating the Bribie Island environment through the lens of John Olsen’s comment that Ian Fairweather was “writing the landscape”. We followed in the footsteps of Ian Fairweather, through an artists’ residency on Bribie Island for five days, in August of 2019.
Tide has served as a broad metaphor for life for millennia: rhythmic, eternal and dynamic, what it brings in, alive and dead, what it takes out, alive and dead, what is chance, what is inevitable, how it turns, and what lies beneath. Tide is universal, but every shore, every riverbank, is different. Within the tidal movements lie all aspects of the seaboard and tidal rivers, including economics, demographics, flora and fauna, bodies of water, geographical features, mining effects, and local history. Our approaches comprise a range of media, including drawing, painting, textile installations, sculpture and video.
Image credit: Jennifer Stuerzl White Patch, Bribie Island (detail) 2019 Oil on canvas. Photo by John Doyle. Courtesy of the artist.
