The Last Stand
The Last Stand by artist Amanda Williams (Eucalyptusdom, 2022) was commissioned by Powerhouse to document the former Experimental Research Plantation at Castle Hill, NSW, Australia.
In 2021, the New South Wales Government committed $36 million to expanding and improving the Powerhouse run Museums Discovery Centre in north-west Sydney. The project necessitated the removal of 327 trees from the site, which museum staff planted in the early 1940s and managed till the late 1970s. Ahead of the removal of these stands of eucalypts and melaleuca, and in conjunction with the Eucalyptusdom project, Powerhouse commissioned artist Amanda Williams to interpret the former Castle Hill Experimental Research Plantation through experimental photography. The hundreds of images she produced now form an essential part of documentation of the site and are intended to facilitate institutional and public contemplation and discussion around the purpose and legacy of the former plantation.
Long days were spent with the trees at the museum's former research plantation in Castle Hill. The significance of the trees and their imminent loss, their legacy, resonated in my mind. I felt a sense of duty to listen to the trees and hold them close. These images record my experience of the plantation, my observations; they are a document of its visible and invisible qualities, recorded with light and time.
