Three months of footsteps along my Ancestors’ journeys since my last journal entry have uncovered my need to define and clarify, hence a long time spent researching and familiarising myself with the definitions and technical terms relating to the fossil forms and flora of my target areas. I’m relating very much to the deep time footprints of those people crossing the slowly drying Lake Mungo millennia ago, directions and purpose definite but with strides caught sinking in sticky surface strata.

Now, like the excavators of those ancient footprints, I am endeavouring to know the depths, directions, purposes and life worlds rendered simultaneously obscure and present by the evidence enshrined in deep time.

I have chosen to dive into what is most immediate and personal to me. Namely with the medicine plants my Grandmother knew intimately, distilled, used and passed down to her children and grandchildren. She inherited  a treasure trove of medicine plant praxis from the multiple generations of grandmothers before her. The same knowledge I have inherited from her and which bush medicines I use myself today,  Irmangka-Irmangka or Eremophila alternifolia.

Delving deeper I discovered 38 eremophila spp most of which are identified for Lower Southern Arrernte people by their ethnopharmaceutical  properties, or healing powers for specific ailments and the means of preparing them. For contemporary palaeoecologists each species of Eremophila is identified by its family, Scophulariaceae, plant type, angiosperm, its morphological type and the various properties and attributes of its pollen. 

I looked at their many times magnified fossil forms brought up from deep time in quaternary samples, and sought out other image sources to cross reference them with. In interrogating how/why these have survived and evolved through deep time I further discovered the existence of terpenoids, angiosperms and phytoliths.

The latter are not plant matter at all  but silica deposits, the role and function of which is to contribute to structure and aid in the evolution and survival of some plants. For me this is a nice parallel to glass making in which silica is one of the essential batch ingredients for glass, which ingredient gives it its structure.

Microphotographic images of these are visually stunning and have the lure of a magic rabbit hole to disappear down, until further research reveals that phytoliths, or traces of silica, are not found in Eremophila, so Eremophila must owe their survival through deep time to something else. An alternative boat to sail and survive the choppy swell of millennia.

The journey of the Deep Time Storyteller has begun. Starting with my first virtual footsteps into the palaeoecology of Xiamen, my paternal grandfather’s place of birth.

Exploring the coastal areas around Xiamen, Amoy when my grandfather was born, encompasses the coastal on and off shore characteristics of the regions to the north and south of Xiamen. It is a seductive process, to peel away the temporal layers of urban and agricultural occupation to reveal the true skin of the land herself.

Many thanks to my creative partner in the journey, Prof. Simon Haberle, for drawing together articles from his Chinese colleagues.  With their help  I have waded through coastal mangroves, recognising some familiar plant and tree forms, and encountering new ones. I have been fascinated by the sediment cores from Daiyun Mountain Nature Reserve to the north, lured by the mysteries to be uncovered in the peat deposits from Leizhou Peninsula to the south. And fascinated to discover that as I go further back in time the place beneath my grandfather’s ancestors’ footprints was warmer, wetter, more sub-tropical than it is today.

I have also looked at some of the micro-photographic images from the Atlas of Quarternary Pollen and Spores in China, which is an overview of fossil pollens and spores from Quarternary sediments in China. As an artist these images are tantalizing! I feel like a kid standing in front of the lolly shop, mouth watering! Click on the link below for a taster!

Draft information for Jenni

As an Aboriginal (Arrernte) artist, storytelling is the heart of my artistic practice. In 2014 I created my first series of hot blown glass  cylindrical Voice Cores, inspired by a long  held fascination with the capacity of scientific cores sunk into the earth to access a place’s deep time through the analysis of palaeoecological spores, pollen and sediments.

In 2019 I created another series of  Voice Cores (now in the collection of the ANU) based on the concept that they represent those First Aboriginal Stories of Place as if they were core samples sunk deep into the earth to extract the shapes, sounds, syllables, vowels and consonants of the most ancient and highly evolved languages ever spoken, the first stories, songs, ceremonies. Each cylinder represents, and is named for a specific grouping of First Stories, Songs and Ceremonies and the glass murrine created specifically for each one were designed to reflect the characteristics of those stories, the land and flora,  and the sounds of the voices that first spoke them.

Prof Simon Haberle and me with Voice Cores series 2 on display in the Coombs Building, ANU, 2023.

In this residency I have the opportunity to take these ideas to the next level. I will work with palaeoecologist Prof. Simon Haberle in the School of Language, History and Culture, Centre for Asia Pacific Studies at the ANU to access the palaeo labs and  micro-photographic databases that hold the deep time secrets beneath my paternal Grandmother’s Lower Southern Arrernte country and my paternal Chinese Grandfather’s south eastern coastal area, Amoy now called Xiamen.

My intention is to research the palaeo stories beneath my Ancestors’ footprints. This is a huge challenge, as the time I have already spent with Simon looking at the palaeo fossil records held by the ANU has revealed a collection of over 5 million images from across Australia, Asia and the Pacific. And the first challenge is to narrow my focus to the sets of fossil forms most directly relevant to those two target areas.

I have been totally captured by the micro-photographic images of pollen, spores, diatoms, phytoliths, charcoal fossil forms, visually intricate, amazing, beautiful! The stuff of professional addiction for any visual artist, and especially one challenging the technical boundaries of hot glass, as I am. So I have begun by looking at what each of these fossils are, plant or non-plant, and what they contribute to the archeological evolution of these places. I am open minded as to what palaeo stories I will uncover as this is a new exploration for me, and my Ancestors’ places of origin were ecologically very different from each other when they were each born.

On a practical level, Simon and I have worked out the logisitcs of my access to the labs and databases over the course of my residency, setting up the necessary ANU ID, swipe card access, room to work, official status while I’m there – Hon. Visiting Research Fellow – wow! Great title for an Artist in Residence who is bent on extracting, abstracting, immersion and  re-interpreting elements of the palaeo-ecological record.

I have given Simon a list of what I need from him as my mentor including field practices and processes for extracting deep time material, how to search such a huge database effectively for my target areas, and the loan of a mac laptop because mine has been declared ‘vintage’ and no longer repairable if something goes wrong. I will also be going into the field with PhD students and staff to get a hands-on experience of field practices and processes, which I am very excited about.