Media releases

The impact of open cut mining on the Latrobe Valley will be explored through art at a new exhibition at Federation University’s Gippsland campus.

The Black Hole Show, an exhibition by Anthea Williams, will be on display at the Switchback Gallery.

Anthea Williams’ exhibition delves into conflict. She uses brown coal derivatives, briquettes and foundry coke as a means of production and subject matter, all the while feeling dismayed and fascinated.

The exhibition will feature 29 works, all of them focused on coal mining in the Latrobe Valley. The works are a timely reminder of the challenges that have faced the region before and after the closure of the Hazelwood power station.

Opening night is from 5:00pm, Tuesday 8 October and the exhibition will run until Friday, 1 November.

Anthea Williams has exhibited extensively both locally, nationally and internationally and was recently shortlisted for The Manningham Victorian Ceramic Award 2019.

Picture: Large Black Hole, 2018, Anthea Williams, briquette and cement

Quotes attributable to artist Anthea Williams

"I live and work in Latrobe Valley, a contrasting landscape of bucolic lush farmland and gritty industrial coal mining with its looming cooling towers, surfaces blackened by dust and the ever present black holes or pits dug in the ground known as open cuts.”

“These open cuts are at the geographic, and economic centre of this place and provide a catalyst for both concepts and the materials used."

Quotes attributable to Neale Stratford, Gippsland Centre for Art and Design, Federation University

“Anthea’s works are about mining, power, and our addiction to energy usage and our collective powerlessness to halt our slippage into the Black Hole.”

“The works are a celebration in matt black and hope to invoke a sense of vertigo via the endless and infinite pit or abyss.” 

“This exhibition is just one of many new events coming up at the Switchback Gallery. There will be a series of new exhibitions unveiled in 2020.”