ABSTRACT
Richard MacEwan and Bonita Ely met at Bonita's studio in Sydney in September 2014 to talk about their experiences with and definitions of the soil. They toured Ely's exhibition at the Gunnery Artspace and began to chart out common ground to develop a narrative that could be relevant for others. Bonita sent Richard many pictures and descriptions of her work and childhood growing up along the Murray River in the State of Victoria, Australia. She even sent a parcel containing soil from her family farm—a rich brown sandy loam from the cultivated paddock, and a red, dense sample from the adjacent roadside. MacEwan admits to repressing his initial compulsion to subject the samples to analysis. Instead he provided responses to Ely's story, interspersing and interrupting that narrative in a constructive way to add scientific detail to her vision of a unique and changing landscape. MacEwan's research of postwar archives reveals assessments of the fertility of soils where Bonita grew up, in a place called Robinvale, in the Mallee of the Murray River. Many World War One Soldier Settlement Schemes were disastrous failures, so after World War II when veterans, including Ely's father, were granted properties to grow grapes, rigor was applied to assess the soil fertility for agricultural schemes and the applicants’ agricultural experience. Ely's immersion as a child in this iconic Australian landscape, its cultural significances and ecology, profoundly influenced her art practice.
