Kairos by Carol Archer
in response to
Chronos
by Danja Darkenne

Audio Description

Audio Description Text

My name is Carol Archer and I made the etching titled ‘Kairos’. It is a framed picture, 22 cm in high and 15 cm wide, and consists of black ink on white paper. ‘Kairos’ depicts a lush environment, a creek bed perhaps. Imagine you are on a bush track, a steep slope in front of you. At the top, several eucalypts, a tree fern, and a small section of a wooden fence are silhouetted darkly against a white sky. At the bottom of the picture, near where you might be standing, is a bright sunlit rock. Half-way up the slope, past a strip of deep shadow, the sun catches the fronds of a large bird’s-nest fern. Close up, the picture is densely worked, filled with a network of intricate marks. My picture is inspired by the thriving forest recorded by Danja Derkenne in ‘Chronos’. At the same time, the dramatic contrasts and complex mark making aim to convey a sense of gravity. As the ‘black summer’ fires showed us, the future of such environments is precarious. The title of the etching, ‘Kairos’ – from Ancient Greek – is intended to suggest that we are at a turning point. It means ‘the right, critical or opportune moment’.

Chronos

by Danja Darkenne

inhalare part 1 – text

Danja Derkenne, Little Forest

Chronos

2020

Searing—vitrified soil, talcum-powder soft, orange explosions of boulders. Tangles of lianas, black calligraphy, dangle. Exposed wombat tunnels meander bizarrely. 

Hot ash underfoot, a fortnight after fire crowned in 50-metre eucalypts. Silence.

Improbable fungi. Dense carpets of lurid Pyronema. Pale splitgills colonise burnt saplings. Enveloping mist caresses skin. Rain. Frog choruses compete. Wombats and lyrebirds emerge. A Gang-gang pair fly far from home, hunting food. Slow motion collapse of trees. Twisting, creaking, whoosh, thump. Showers of sparks eject from burning cores. Winds roar through canyons.

2021

Rain drums, tanks gurgle. Fertilised with ash, seed banks burst with rainforest emergents. A cedar erupts in the garden. Deafening frogs. Creek bed overflows, gushing over a dry waterfall. Boom of tumbling water. Greens luminous with lightning. Thunder echoes. Clouds surge upwards from warm ground. Cockatoos presage more rain. Boobooks call. Springs trace ancient water lines moving over the land.

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