“the feral green gemstone and other stories”
Lhotse Collins
4 May → 26 June 2024

a beige coloured weaving with a few green threads and a single green gemstone towards the bottom of the weaving sits on a white wall. There are long threads coming out from the bottom of the weaving.
Lhotse Collins, 'the feral green gemstone and other stories', detail, 2024, installation view, West Space Window, Collingwood Yards. Photography by Janelle Low

Showing in the West Space Window, Lhotse Collins' the feral green gemstone and other stories looks to spend time with the contaminated and entangled histories and ecologies of the Birrung (Yarra) river. Thinking of the ongoing colonial impacts which alter worlds, the works look to find ways to unlearn, resist and build different futures.

The material was gathered from the banks of the Birrung just above Dights Falls where Lhotse swims. They write,

"Salt seeps up Wurundjeri rivers past wool washers and tallow works, pesticides change ancient ecologies – fish mutate. Plastic gemstones live long into our futures, ancient sediment holding them in place. Ghosts linger at the banks and we are scared to swim. A human becomes an eel and migrates to the sea before the falls get rebuilt. Swimming here fills my body with ancient waters yet feral runs through me. There is a placelessness and horrific embeddedness as our actions splinter futures.
Mud, when held, can transport you to a gelatinous river bank coloured by flour, blood and the washing of fleece – It can take you further too – to a river winding out through wetlands before the sea rose and long before the boats came.
This building is part of these stories; bricks baked with clay quarried from stolen banks. My great grandchild tells me about revolutions that did come and I read books backwards in order to reach there. Quarries are filled with some other dirt and this bending river was straightened. Someone told me in a dream that they are working on reverting this, but some processes can never truly be undone."

Read Concrete Womb: Re-imagining Urban Water by Lily-rose Pouget.

The West Space window installed with several sculptual works and 1 long weaving. The window is surrounded by red bricks
A small unfired mass of clay that has a collection of plastic gemstones pressed into it. The clay sits on two hooks that are installed in to the wall of the West Space Window
A long weaving with long weft threads hanging off the bottom and a lump of unfired wild clay infused with plastic gems hang on the wall of the West Space Window gallery
An installation view of several clay works and some hand made mud bricks sit in the base of the West Space Window gallery. There are spirals engraved and embossed in some of the clay works
A sculpted slab of clay that resembles a walking labrynth sits upon a stick that is installed to wall of the West Space Window gallery.
A close up detail of an artwork by Lhotse Collins. The artwork is a slab of unfired wild clay with two swirling lines that has been sculpted into the circular tablet of clay
a close up detail of some crumbled wild clay. The clay is air dry but unfired. There is a spiral engraved into the surface of the clay. The artwork is sitting in the base of the West Space Window gallery
The West Space window installed with several sculptual works and 1 long weaving. The window is surrounded by red bricks

Lhotse Collins is an artist, writer and organiser in Naarm/Melbourne. Lhotse works across sculptural installation, weaving, writing and performance, engaging with myth, folklore and historical pasts to uncover lost futures. Their practice is a process for unlearning and re-worlding. For Lhotse, place, materials and matter are considered mystic collaborators and speak with more-than-humans an action of resistance.