Megan Cope
‘Water: A rising tide’
The middens on artist Megan Cope’s traditional country trace a cultural timeline extending back more than 20000 years and mark the vital relationship Quandamooka people maintain with the underwater and intertidal world.
Shell middens once had an even stronger presence across Moreton Bay. Cope’s people cultivated oyster reefs as a part of sophisticated aquaculture systems on sites including Minjerribah (North Stradbroke Island). The shellfish kept the waters healthy, feeding families as well as much larger groups, and vast mounds of discarded shells built up. Densely layered, these structures stood like monuments across islands, beaches and gathering sites inland. Colonisation disrupted these long patterns of sustenance, as middens around Australia were burnt to make the lime mortar used to cement growing cities such as Brisbane.
Megan Cope / Quandamooka people / Australia b.1982 / RE FORMATION (detail) 2016–19 / Cast-concrete oyster shells, copper slag / Purchased 2019 with funds from the Contemporary Patrons through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: QAGOMA / © Megan Cope / Photograph: N Harth, QAGOMA
Cope reminds us of this history — as well as the continued presence and adaptability of her people — by reinventing dry-stone wall construction techniques to build a midden from cast-concrete oyster shells and black copper slag. This installation has been exhibited in different forms across Australia, and each time a new subtitle is added referring to a local midden. RE FORMATION (Noogoon/St Helena Island) 2019, names a key site for the lime-burning industry in this region, situated where the Brisbane River enters Moreton Bay.
Through her work, Cope focuses on restorative processes, hoping to see the regeneration of reef systems across Quandamooka country, creating food and clean water for generations to come.
RE FORMATION 2016-19
- COPE, Megan - Creator
