News Alert |

An upcoming exhibition at the Eureka Centre Ballarat examines the environmental impact of the Victorian Gold Rush. 

Overburden, an exhibition of recent drawings by Ballarat artist, Lily Mae Martin, opens 3 February and will run until 2 August 2020. Overburden addresses the legacy of Gold Rush mining and explores our relationship with, and perception of, the natural world.  

Through close observation of the landscape around Ballarat - one of Victoria’s most alluring Gold Rush cities - Lily Mae has uncovered what she describes as evidence of past catastrophic environmental exploitation and destruction caused by mining during the Victorian Gold Rush. 

Lily Mae Martin’s practice mostly focussed on the human form until in 2016 when she moved to a home near the Waterloo State Forest and completed a set of drawings.    

She was surprised when a friend remarked that the forest depicted in her new drawings looked very young. “This struck me as I realised how much I hadn’t really thought about the landscape itself but had been focusing instead on how I could speak through it.” 

“But of course, the reason the forest is so young is due to the impact of humans – in particular, the Gold Rush’” she said.   

From initially viewing this wilderness as pure and unadulterated, she began to see it differently: as deeply impacted by the history of Gold Rush mining activity. Her new-found knowledge inspired a deeper investigation into the forgotten environmental mining disasters across the Victorian goldfields, culminating in the creation of the drawings features in the Overburden exhibition. 

Eureka Centre Ballarat Manager, Anthony Camm, said through working with contemporary artists, it was possible to explore history from a fresh perspective.  

 “We know that cities like Ballarat were built on the wealth of the Gold Rush, but through this exhibition Lily Mae has explored the cost of that mining to our environment. She connects this past damage to current concerns about the environment, with reference to climate change,” he said. 

Lily Mae’s recent drawings are the result of a year of focussed research and site visits throughout the Ballarat region. Through walking and drawing, Lily Mae began to understand how the landscape had become heavily impacted by mining and transformed by earthworks - abandoned mine shafts, mullock heaps, and the abundant evidence of sludge that once clogged water systems. 

She also discovered areas where mining had occurred that seemed almost entirely reclaimed by nature. 

Lily Mae describes the inspiration and impetus for the project: “Overburden is a collection of work about how mining the earth for gold has permanently altered and reshaped the physical landscape. So much about history is about the human story - but we so rarely ask about the stories of the land. What about the environment in which we live; what do we value and what do we throw away? What do we put in museums and what is left on private farms, in state forests? Now more than ever, it seems all the more urgent to notice what we don’t notice.” 

For media inquiries, please contact the Eureka Centre Ballarat on 1800 446 633