Here they are - Coral Bleach and The Coal Heads - at Parliament station standing up for BUMS, ahem, YOUR rightful rights and entitlements on the eve of Australia's Federal Election 2022! Making sure that peeps don't be fooled by other peeps' FAKE NEWS*!...
Sunday, 31st October 2021, from 7pm to sunset in Melbourne (from 8am Glasgow, UK time)
A performed installation of newly created music to send a powerful message to United Nations delegates as they arrived for Day 1 of COP26 climate negotiations.
As dusk fell, seven Climate Guardians performed on Melbourne’s iconic Princes Bridge; one Angel for each of the Earth’s continents. Joining as Angels, composers/musicians Susan Bamford Caleo and Elissa Goodrich performed their specially created music arranged for Federation Handbells.
To mark World Environment Day 2021, we're challenging one of Australia's most polluting proposals - BHP & Woodside's Scarborough LNG project. Seriously dodgy carbon accounting practices are enabling fossil fuel companies to exempt emissions from projects that they...
Image courtesy of Julian Meehan As reported in The Mornington Peninsula News, Climate Guardians proudly joined concerned local citizens from Save Westernport at Crib Point’s Woolley’s Beach on Monday 22 February. Our visit was strategically timed to coincide with the...
As challenging as well as deeply unfairly felt as lockdowns have been, COVID-19’s capacity to expose democracy’s diseases has been exceptional. At least it seems that a lot more people are seriously considering what the point is of: • leaders who wilfully ignore...
What follows is BUMS official submission to this heinous Victorian Government Inquiry: 24 August 2020 Crib Point Inquiry and Advisory Committee Planning Panels Victoria SUBMISSION: Crib Point gas import jetty and gas pipeline project Dear Sir/Madam, This Inquiry is...
In this leaked email from Coal Digger Coral Bleach to ScoMo, Aussie billionaire fossil fuel doyens plead for further massive public handouts. Dearly Devoted ScoMo, We can't thank you and your fossil fuel friendly office enough for entrusting us with Australia's...
As United Nations delegates were arriving for Day 1 of COP25 climate negotiations in Madrid, 624 pairs of hand cast clay skins from Bridget Nicholson’s Touch This Earth Lightly project lay in tight neat rows on the banks of the Yarra River opposite Federation Square...
Dear Mr Henry, Congratulations on your new role as BHP's CEO. We feel encouraged by reports suggesting that you intend continuing BHP's progress in response to fast evolving community expectations that companies take responsibility for their impacts on communities and...
Climate Guardians are immensely proud to have joined hundreds of courageous people from all walks of life—teachers, musicians, traditional custodians, doctors, writers, artists, labourers, nurses, academics and so on—at the recent IMARC (International Mining and...
In Australia, we’re not really aware enough of the qualities of water and even though we’re a country stricken with drought [among major city dwellers] there isn’t a lot of awareness of the fragility and politics of water. (Janet Laurence, 2016)
Paddington Reservior Gardens – February 11 2016: Janet Laurence at the H20 water bar (Photo by Nikki To/City of Sydney)
In terms of strategic narrative building, the timing of an invitation from Sydney-based internationally celebrated artist Janet Laurence to visit her latest experiential art installation could not have been more divine.
Paddington Reservior Gardens – February 11 2016: H20 water bar (Photo by Nikki To/City of Sydney)
The Climate Guardians met Janet in Paris where—as a long time artist exploring nature realms in depth—she had been selected to represent Australia at the Artists 4 Climate project during COP21. Fortunately we had an opportunity to stage a ‘visitation’ at her deeply moving exhibition Deep Breathing: Resuscitation for the Reef at Paris’s Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle. It was unforgettable; a rich experience by every measure.
On the eve of the H2O: Water Bar’s preview opening with Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore, the Climate Guardians travelled from the Pilliga State Forest. The day before they had been arrested for trying to prevent Santos’ workers from entering the Narrabri Gas Project site. In addition to threatening the largest inland forest left in Eastern Australia, Santos’ 850 coal seam gas wells will sit above a critically important ‘recharge zone’ supporting the crucial pressure head enabling ground water from the Great Artesian Basin to flow to the surfaces of the massive expanse of land dependent on it (think growing food).
Paddington Reservior Gardens – February 11 2016: Silvia Greco with her two sons Guilio and Filippo at the H20 water bar (Photo by Nikki To/City of Sydney)
Water tastes very different according to its journey and where its settled…Our water is so fragile, and so much of our water has been affected by industrialisation and mining. People don’t realise it’s their drinking water that’s being affected in that way. (Janet Laurence, 2016)
After our visit to areas of Northern NSW that are gravely threatened by mining and fracking, arriving at Janet’s H2O: Water Bar installation in Paddington’s Reservoir Gardens felt intelligently surreal. Housed in the ambient inner space of the Reservoir, Janet’s installation appears like a vintage apothecary or magical laboratory with all different shapes and sizes of glistening glassware holding samples of water sourced from different parts of Australia. Also a diverse range of stunning, thought provoking water related images are projected onto ancient walls at either end of the grand heritage space. A sommelier had been engaged to help identify the diverse waters’ different tastes, in terms of their trace mineral elements—the result of their various origins or the rocks they have eased their way through, some over thousands of years. For Janet, installing the H2O: Water Bar in Paddington’s Reservoir space was the realisation of a decade long dream.
Paddington Reservior Gardens – February 11 2016: H20 water bar (Photo by Nikki To/City of Sydney)
The Climate Guardians role was to simply wander through the spaces and to speak with guests about our work as activists. Like Janet, we believe that creative expressions can get under people’s ideological guards and open their hearts to the essence of what has become a deeply politicized issue. Just a glance at the bitter history of Australia’s climate change debate (to which the health of our hydrological systems are integral) reveals the depths to which vested interests have misled and deceived decision makers and the public in appallingly self-serving ways. In fact before Janet’s show had opened and stunned people with its beauty and intelligence, it was coming under heavy fire from conservative bloggers. Why? Perversely, their pre-launch critiques may have led to the show’s struggles to service the large number of partakers.
Having just come from a threatened site sitting atop Australia’s Great Artesian Basin, we couldn’t wait to put our wings on. Janet’s announcement that the Climate Guardians had just come from being arrested attempting to protect the Pilliga Forest from a diabolical fracking project was met with enthusiastic applause. Naturally we felt enormously proud and privileged to help Janet and her creatively committed colleagues raise awareness of Australia’s deeply confused relationship with it’s most precious and fragile vital resource: H2O.
Paddington Reservior Gardens – February 11 2016: H20 water bar (Photo by Nikki To/City of Sydney)
This important exhibition has been accompanied by an impressive series of public programs including talks, music performances and poetry readings.