Curated by Nina Miall and created by Ghost Net Collective with a group of Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists from Cairns, Townsville and Erub in the Torres Strait, the site-specific installation reflects on cultural practices, biodiversity, sustainability, and the environment, revealing the implications of abandoned, lost or discarded fish nets, known as “ghost nets.”
A permanent installation responsive to its surrounding environment, Mermer Waiskeder (Stories of the Moving Tide) comprises eleven eagle rays, each 2.8 metres wide, hand-stitched with colourful ghost nets covering aluminium frames – with 100 people from around the world contributing their own hand-stitched miniature rays to the piece. The abundant, toxic green plastic netting contaminates the soothing oceanic colour palette in an attempt to reveal a darker side to fishing. Still, the artists have chosen to turn this harmful material into something beautiful. At night, the sculptures are illuminated from within to cast projections of rippling water, submerging the viewer underwater and conveying the impression of a fever of rays swimming in the shallows overhead, we are left bathed in their beauty.
Lynnette Griffiths, lead artist, commented: “The work provokes a magical underwater feeling that not only makes you think about the animals
