Foundations III

“Since 2016, Megan Cope has produced a body of work engaged with the history of Aboriginal middens. In archaeological terms, middens are mounds that contain the residues of Aboriginal family life, such as shells and animal bones – food items discarded after eating seasonal foods. They are a cumulative record of sovereign occupation by First Peoples, and Cope considers them “a form of Aboriginal architecture” as the enormous mounds are cultural sites and specific place-markers in the landscape.

This body of work is divided into two related series of sculptural installations, collectively titled RE FORMATION (2016–2017) and Foundations (2016–2020). Together they address the significance of middens as sacred sites, as well as their decimation from urban development, resource extraction, tourism and other commercial activities.

Cope’s Foundations works are modular constructions arranged in grids directly on the gallery floor. Each component is comprised of a native Kinyinyarra shell ( ‘oyster’ in Cope’s Jandai language) embedded in a small geometric support cast from concrete. Her choice of title and materials references the destruction of middens during the early colonial period, when they were mined by white ‘settlers’ for limestone, which was then burned to make mortar. This practice was integral to establishing the colony in Sydney including at Tallawoladah, the Gadigal name for the rocky headland upon which the MCA building stands. The hundreds of components massed together in Foundations III collectively evoke those historical building foundations and the more recent imposition of an urban grid onto this landscape.

By contrast, Cope’s RE FORMATION works take the form of cast shells embedded in mounds of ilmenite and copper slag, echoing the peaks and slopes of hand-built shell piles. REFORMATION III (Dubbagullee) (2017) refers specifically to the majestic shell middens that were once at Tubowgule (Bennelong Point), on the opposite side of Warrane (Sydney Cove) to the MCA. These middens were testament to the site’s significance as a place for Gadigal gatherings and ceremony. Remnants of the colonial lime-burning pits that were used to destroy them are lodged in the ground beneath the Sydney Opera House.
While Foundations III and REFORMATION III (Dubbagullee) deal directly with this history of exploitation in Sydney, Cope’s midden works are more broadly engaged with the impacts of colonisation on customary Aboriginal life up and down the eastern seaboard, including on her Quandamooka Country. As she points out, Kinyinyarra were traditionally a primary food source for Quandamooka people living in the area now known as Moreton Bay, who would harvest them in sustainable quantities from hand-built oyster beds.[1] Since the 1820s, however, the local oyster population has been decimated by agricultural export industries and European land-use practices. Cope’s current research is oriented toward the future prospect of rejuvenating the local habitat for Kinyinyarra at Minjerribah (North Stradbroke Island) and of building middens anew.”
- Text curtesy of Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, online.

[1] Megan Cope, “Yarabinja Bujarang. Beautiful Sea Country,” in Sovereign Words. Indigenous Art, Curation and Criticism, ed. Katya García-Antón (Oslo: Office for Contemporary Art Norway and Amsterdam: Valiz, 2018: 137.

EXHIBITION HISTORY
- MCA Collection: Perspectives on place, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. Curated by Anneke Jaspers. 26 February 2021 - 18 March 2023

Documentation by Jessica Maurer.