This work engages with tactile material metaphors and layered local historical narratives pertaining to the colour red. Used for colouring fabric and cosmetics red, cochineal dye is traditionally made from macerated cochineal beetles, native to Mexico, who live solely on prickly pear cactus leaves. In colonial times the British aspired to set up a cochineal industry in Sydney, sending cochineal beetles and prickly pear cactuses with the First Fleet in 1788. However synthetic dyes soon replaced the insect-sourced pigment and value plummeted. Yet the prickly pear cactus thrived here and choked thousands of hectares of farmland. The plant seemed utterly impossible to eradicate, until 1926 when an Argentinian moth, Cactoblastis cactorum, was introduced as a method of biological control. Unlike the more infamous cane toad, the cactus moth delivered a remarkable biocontrol success story, almost completely eradicating the prickly pear cactus. Today the naïve colonial directive, which disastrously introduced this plant and seeded one of the world’s great biological invasions, is merely a forgotten historical stain.
The prickly pear cactus leaves in my Cochineal installation have been burnt with melted sealing wax stamps. The green plant cellulose is gradually turning brown and decaying around each seared branding, echoing the story of the bio-narratives of the cochineal beetle and cactoblastis moth consuming the cactus.
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| Kath Fries, Cochineal, 2018, prickly pear cactus, red sealing wax and wire in historic underground chamber (detail view) |
THE RED PROJECT
3 - 18 March 2018
The Coal Loader Tunnel and Chambers
2 Balls Head Drive, Waverton NSW
Open daily 10am – 5pm
Artists talks: 11am Saturday 17 March
ARTISTS: Jessica Birk, Gloria Florez, Kath Fries, Tina Fox, Nathalie Hartog Gautier, Nola Jones, Penelope Lee, Debbie Mackinnon, Michele Morcos, Virginia Moorfield, Ingrid Morley, Anne Numont, Denese Oates, Meri Peach, Mandy Pryse-Jones, Tamsin Salehian, Alma Studholme, Helen Sturgess, Janet Tavener, Jane Theau, Alex Thorby, Ingrid van der Aa, Sandra Winkworth and Basia Zielinska.
Curator: Alison Clark
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| Kath Fries, Cochineal, 2018, prickly pear cactus, red sealing wax and wire in historic underground chamber |
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| Kath Fries, Cochineal, 2018, prickly pear cactus, red sealing wax and wire in historic underground chamber (detail view) |
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| Kath Fries, Cochineal, 2018, red sealing wax (detail view) |
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| Kath Fries, Cochineal, 2018, red sealing wax (detail view) |
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| Kath Fries, Cochineal, 2018, prickly pear cactus, red sealing wax and wire in historic underground chamber (detail view) |
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| Kath Fries, Cochineal, 2018, prickly pear cactus, red sealing wax and wire in historic underground chamber (detail view) |
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| Kath Fries, Cochineal, 2018, prickly pear cactus, red sealing wax and wire in historic underground chamber (detail view) |
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