Fossil Fables

Fossil Fables is a collection of stories that explore Australia's complex relationship with extraction and coal mining. These stories are told through a series of installations that use the tools of architecture to analyze and communicate the influence of energy production and resource extraction in our society.

The exhibition brings the vast energy landscapes of the Hunter Valley into the interior of the urban gallery, making visible the unearthly places that the Anthropocene has terraformed at scales unimaginable to the general populace. Each work in the exhibition situates an aspect of this complex problem in a spatial and affective way, telling stories of scale, violence, and materiality.

The projects in Fossil Fables describe the enmeshing of historic, mythic, political, economic, and material issues that play out in the shaping of Australia's particular national ethos and identity. They are a powerful reminder of the impact that extraction industries have on our environment and our communities.

The Global Extraction Observatory is a research collective founded by Dr. Eduardo Kairuz and Dr. Sam Spurr, with collaborators d’Arcy Newberry Dupé and Bader Bud Rizk. They are committed to examining the aesthetics of energy production and resource extraction through creative practice, scholarship, and engagement. Fossil Fables is the latest in a series of exhibitions and projects that explore these themes and their impact on our world.

Curated with Kate Goodwin

Documentation by Maja Baska © 2023

Exhibition Tour

Venue: Tin Sheds Gallery

Dates: Friday 9 June 11am & Saturday 24 June 11am

Join Eduardo Kairuz and Sam Spurr for an exhibition tour on the weekend.

Minefields — A lecture-performance

Thursday 22 June, 6.00 pm

Venue: Tin Sheds Gallery

The Global Extraction Observatory presents the lecture-performance Minefields, focused on the effects of energy production and resource extraction in Australia and beyond. This lecture-performance draws on sounds, texts, voice and images to unpick the historic, mythic, political, economic and material entanglement that defines Australia's mining identity. 

Fossil Fables — Book launch

This evening will also launch the book Fossil Fables, designed and conceptualised in collaboration with Therese Keogh, incorporating images and texts developed specifically for this exhibition.

Tin Sheds Gallery acknowledges the Gadigal of the Eora Nation, upon whose ancestral lands our exhibitions take place. We pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging, acknowledging them as the traditional custodians of knowledge of these lands, waterways and Country.

Top image: Dark Matter,  Global Extraction Observatory (GEO) 2023