Karen Miranda Abel

Gardens of Stone is a series elemental reflecting pools referencing the undulating portals of seven individual sandstone caves in the Gardens of Stone region located in Wiradjuri Country, Greater Blue Mountains UNESCO World Heritage Area. Locally known by bushwalkers as Michelangelo Cave, Rain Cave, Sand Cave, Cathedral Cave, Acoustic Chamber, Dome Cave and Cosmic Cave, several of these magnificent stone formations are located in unprotected bushland threatened by coal mining.

The sculptures were created as the central work of Abel’s 2018 solo exhibition, Liminal Refugia, at the Blue Mountains City Art Gallery in New South Wales, Australia. The shape of each sculpture is derived from the artist’s personal perspective while situated within the spatial interior of the cave looking out; whereas the gallery visitor is offered the sensation of being outside the cave opening looking in. Generating this meeting point of perceptual duality suggests a mirrored threshold—a liminal realm of physical and psychological geographies.

The sculptures were left outside for a period in Blue Mountains bushland exposed to the region’s heavy rainfall and intense southern hemisphere sun to obtain a natural iron oxide patina, creating a distinct colouration evocative of the ironstone layers that characterize Triassic sandstone.

The sculptural merging of mineral and water embodies the fundamental relationship between rock and rainwater in cave formation. Shielded from the elements yet created by them, the Triassic sandstone caves of the Greater Blue Mountains are mainly formed in the Narrabeen strata, sedimentary layers that tell the story of more than 200 million years of intricate and enduring geological history of eastern Australia’s Sydney Basin. Found at the bases and cliff edges of globally significant sandstone pagoda formations unique to the Greater Blue Mountains, these commanding geomorphic structures were sculpted over time by the slow movement of water through stone. This process of cavernous weathering etches the quartz grains from the absorbent sandstone body. Like a mythic hourglass, waves of time gradually deposit a soft mineral bed as the stone hollows; a bone-dry beach harboured beneath the cave’s protective stone arch.

Also known as rock shelters, the shallow sandstone caves of the Greater Blue Mountains differ from deep limestone caves, such as the renowned Jenolan Caves, as they do not possess what is defined in speleology as a “dark zone.” Beyond the undulating portal at the cave mouth, these spaces house what is known as a “twilight zone.” This liminal quality of light and space conjures a sensation of an in-between state—suspension between worlds, between times—in the crepuscular glow of these cloaked environments. Through visitation to such a primeval threshold, it’s as if one momentarily stands in the footsteps of an irrecoverable distance of time, sustaining a prolonged glance at an overarching order of magnitude.

In the rugged Australian bushland, these stone chambers have offered asylum from oppressive heat, bush fire, prevailing winds and storm events for millennia, constituting vital refugia for humans and wildlife such as the Rock Ringlet Butterfly, Rock Warbler, Superb Lyrebird, Masked Owl, Eastern Cave Bat, Black Rock Skink and Common Wombat. The dry, shielded nature of these ecospheric interiors have similarly safeguarded galleries of Aboriginal art created on the walls of a great number of Blue Mountains caves hundreds or thousands of years ago—an aspect which continues to shelter the vibrancy of these significant art works today.

Many sandstone caves and encompassing bushland areas are increasingly at risk of being forever changed by large-scale anthropogenic disturbances. Outside of national park boundaries, the impact of underground fossil fuel extraction in unprotected regions of the Greater Blue Mountains shifts the landscape corpus, causing deep vertical fractures that bisect and collapse massive stone pagodas and cliffs, subsequently draining rare hanging swamps and silencing gentle waterfalls. This dramatic image of irreversible destruction vividly contrasts with the protective shield that these same ancient stone structures have offered to delicate cave art works created by humans for millennia.

Visit Liminal Refugia for additional photographs.

BACKGROUND

As the 2017-2018 Blue Mountains Cultural Centre World Heritage Artist in Residence, Abel’s site-sensitive field research practice for the culminating solo exhibition Liminal Refugia emerged out of three visits to Australia. This research period constituted over 150 days of living and working in the Blue Mountains from the large studio at Bilpin International Ground for Creative Initiatives. Abel traversed to more than 20 exemplary sandstone caves hidden deep in the distinct pagoda formations of Wiradjuri, Darug and Gundungurra Country. These remarkable sites are situated in the Gardens of Stone and Wollemi National Parks as well as the vast unprotected bushland that lies seamlessly outside of the boundaries of these two official reserves.

As part of a commitment to forming an understanding of the fortitude and fragility of the sandstone caves of the Greater Blue Mountains, Abel invested a period of solitary time in a selection of caves as an intimate study of place, spending many consecutive hours at some remote sites. The hours transpired like minutes in the static cave environment where Abel experienced the form and quality of “twilight zone” light instilled in each stone interior, often wondering when was the last time a human – a woman – spent a similar amount of time in the same cave, if ever.

Remote and off-track, in contemporary times the sandstone caves of the Greater Blue Mountains are, at most, only briefly investigated by a handful of bushwalkers each year. Finding the isolated caves was an extraordinary honour gifted by the generous expertise of Yuri Bolotin, conservationist and experienced bush explorer, who, along with his bushwalking friends, is credited with locating and documenting a number of magnificent caves in the region. Bolotin guided Abel to the cave sites equipped with an innate and exceptionally rare navigational sensibility praised by seasoned bushwalkers as bushcraft.

Karen Miranda Abel wishes to express respect and acknowledgement to the Elders, individuals, families, and communities of the six Aboriginal language groups—Darkinjung, Darug, Dharawal, Gundungurra, Wanaruah and Wiradjuri—who are the original and continuing Carers of Country in the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area, Australia.