The aim of Desert Equinox 10th Anniversary (DE10) is to enliven the city of Broken Hill with a suite of site-specific and site-responsive installations created and installed by artists in residence at Broken Hill Art Exchange (BHAE). Supported by the Environmental Research Initiative for Art (ERIA), UNSW and utilising cutting-edge off-grid solar technologies, the construction/installation process will itself become a performative act, unfolding in real time and space to culminate in a three-night event.

Building on experience and relationships developed during and since the initial Desert Equinox in 2012, we plan not to recreate, but rather to reference and surpass it.

It’s been 10 years since we put together that original public exhibition, backed by an ARC grant awarded to ERIA, partnered by BHAE (with Susan Thomas at its helm). Our aim was to expand on a handful of solar and sustainability-related artworks included in a show I’d co-curated at Sydney Olympic Park, and create Australia’s first solar art exhibition in the city of Broken Hill.

Research-wise, the original exhibition read as sustainable public art: testing experimental technologies and ecological models for new interdisciplinary installations aimed at regenerating degraded sites.

Practically, it involved creating a platform for delivering novel ideas in remote and unexpected places: public artworks as a part of – rather than about – the systems and contexts that are their subjects of investigation.

For us as artists, the arid zone presented both a challenge and an opportunity, while artmaking and installing became a performance improvised in public space. We all had to be there 24/7, working with our colleagues and friends at BHAE to pull the show off. And pull it off we did – click here to see the original catalogue, and here for some media about the exhibition.

This time around, a wide range of practitioners have been selected from the wealth of talent involved in that first memorable event (10 of the original artists return in DE10) and five subsequent off-grid, award-winning Sydney-based events. (Click on 'About' [above], then on 'The Environmental Research Initiative ...' to read more about these events.)

Although these Sydney-based shows were all supported well by the wealthy urban councils where they were staged, one of the key elements present during Desert Equinox in 2012 was lacking: the camaraderie that developed between the artists involved and the community, and also within the group of artists, had been much stronger in Broken Hill.

On reflection, I could see that three factors had combined here to nurture relationships between artists and site, artists and community, and artist to artist, and bring about meaningful results: the isolated nature of the residency; the generosity of spirit shown by BHAE and the local community; and the shared accommodation. No one went home at the end of the evening to their ‘real’ lives: Desert Equinox, for a brief period, was their real lives.

As many of the artists invited to participate in DE10 either are or have been preparators (professional art installers), the team is well placed to meet the challenges it will face in the arid zone. A solid relationship with BHAE and its enthusiastic volunteers, who have kept the Desert Equinox name alive and well for 10 years, guarantees a base conducive to the development of both artworks and fruitful relationships.

I am hugely looking forward to time spent in Broken Hill once again, experiencing the positive impact that this form of artmaking has on a community and on the practitioners in temporary residence, not to mention my personal pleasure spending time with colleagues I deeply respect, in a very special place.

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