Bioregional Rings

In 2017 my collaborator Kyoko Hashimoto and I made a work we called the Terra Rings, a series of rings each topped with either a raw material –limestones, coals, even crude oil– or their processed materials of design –concrete and plastics. We sourced those raw materials from all over the world using online geological sample supply catalogues, from literally every continent except Antartica. Its opened our eyes to the scale of global supply chains.

Since then we have been invested in understanding local supply chains, and in particular, the bioregional scale for resource extraction. Bioregions, as areas bound natural features rather than human made borders, present a scale of for human and non-human ecological interaction that is more manageable and transparent than the global scale, and we hope to mitigate some of the harms created by global supply chains with this research.

The Bioregional Rings explore the resources of place. The first iteration for the Sydney Basin bioregion was exhibited at the National Gallery of Victoria in 2021 and and the second for the Central Coast bioregion north of Sydney was the winner of the South Australian Museum’s Waterhouse Natural Science Art Prize.

Images of the Bioregional Rings (Sydney Basin) by Traianos Pakioufakis.