Alison & Boyd

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Coalface

collab 2014-01-01

Coalface is an expanded art project that has evolved over several years to talk about Australia’s ongoing mining of coal amidst the climate crisis. It incorporates sculpture, sound, performance, community engagement, video, a webpage and a greenhouse audit and off-set.

It began when we joined an artists’ camp on Bimblebox Nature Refuge, then threatened by a gigantic coal mine ( now saved!). For the exhibition that toured Australia, we made “Coalface” and “Carbon Dating”. We invited 153 musicians from around the world to give voice to the 153 species of birds found on the Reserve, and 30 children made drawings of the birds. These collaborative elements can be seen and heard here and the touring show can be seen here  “Bimblebox: art – science – nature” 2014-17 More about The Bimblebox Alliance.

Documenting Coalface -in performance at Manly Art Gallery, video recorded at Bimblebox and birds nests seen in Coalface's eyes with Coalface sondtrack excerpts.

The Coalface mask and Coal-ship-shoes are used in performance, a risky navigation in these clumsy shoes/vessels (like the the bulk carriers navigating coal out through the Great Barrier Reef). The Coalface mask has in its sights, (as video in the eye-sockets), the innocent birds taking water at the old stockyard trough on Bimblebox Nature Reserve; and refugee birds’ nests built with human detritus. It is wired for the soundtrack. Short-listed for an Australian Art Music Award 2015. The Soundtrack can be heard here.

Short-listed for an Australian Art Music Award 2015, The Coalface soundtrack, video, mask and coal-ship shoes are an installation and also a performance work. This iteration of Coalface draws on the touring work, and on the location – at the backstage door of the grand Leichhardt Town Hall, it suggests a drama about to unfold.

Coalface (part 2) Subliminal  beneath the fringe festival September 2015 Leichhardt Town Hall and environs.
Banner, soundtrack, seating.

Coalface 4 Filmed at the National Day of Climate Action, Sydney 22/2/2020. Sound recorded at the action and at Bimblebox Nature Refuge (now under threat of coal mining SAVED!) in the Galilee Basin, Queensland.

Particulate Matter: a fossil fuelled future?  Coalface 4&5 was included in this exhibition Cross Art Projects 6 March - 2 May 2020 "Alison Clouston’s Coalface death mask (2020) in Particulate Matter belongs to a set of her works that double as performance costumes with Extinction Rebellion or at mass climate emergency rallies, debuting at National Day of Action, Sydney Town Hall (22 February 2020). In collaboration with composer Boyd’s soundscapes, Clouston links the ‘social situations’ of street protest to immersive ‘social archives’ of deep, even geological time, or cyclical time experienced in a gallery installation."

🥇 Coalface 4 & 5, installation Fishers Ghost Art Award, Contemporary winner 2021

From the catalogue essay by Jo Holder and Djon Mundine OAM. Read the whole essay here.  

Article by Tracey Clement in Art Guide - Crisis management in interesting times 

Coalface 4 & 5, installation Cross Arts Projects & Fishers Ghost Art Award, Contemporary winner 2021
Alpha 1 detail Fiona Macdonald -Clive Palmers plan for Bimblebox
Video recorded at a trough on Bimblebox and seen in Coalfaces Eyes