As a deep and bitter war rages over the future of wind farms in the Illawarra, a gentle new coastal exhibition shows what can be gained from shifting perspectives.
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City+Sea is the work of four University of Wollongong researchers who set out to get to know this place they call home through its relationship with the water.
In order to understand the connection, artists Dr Kim Williams and Dr Lucas Ihlein, coastal geographer Associate Professor Sarah Hamylton and human geographer Associate Professor Leah Gibbs decided they needed to look at the land from the ocean, and not just the other way around.
They brought in Hayden Griffith, a cinematographer experienced with providing stabilised footage in the great outdoors, and set off on a fishing boat expedition from Otford to Shell Cove.
Sketching and filming the Illawarra shoreline as they went, the crew arrived at their destination, Bass Point gravel loader, three hours and 40 minutes later.
The rarely-seen view captured during the voyage forms the centrepiece of the City+Sea exhibition and has been projected onto a wall of the UOW Gallery.
It's accompanied by a 26-metre-long watercolour of the coastline, which is based on original sketches completed by the four researchers while they were on the boat.
"It was a team effort, with four of us drawing at the same time," Dr Gibbs said.
"Then Kim Williams, who's the lead artist, brought that sketch together as a watercolour painting."
Elder, poet and activist Aunty Barbara Nicholson contributed two pieces of writing to the exhibition - a short poem at the entrance to the gallery and a longer one that sits above the artwork.
Another point of view
While Dr Gibbs said the boat trip was fascinating and revelatory, her biggest takeaway had nothing to do with the land's edge.
"The key thing I came away with is the idea that when we physically shift our perspective, it really opens our minds to seeing a place in a different way," she said.
"And I think that's a bit of a metaphor really, for when we try to be empathetic and try to understand other people's perspectives, points of views and experiences, that we can really learn from that.
"And we can understand a place, or anything really, in a different way."
While the UOW team's research didn't touch on turbines, Dr Gibbs wasn't surprised the Illawarra generated more than double the number of submissions on the proposal than all other offshore wind zones combined.
"The ocean is such a huge part of the Illawarra," she said.
"It's with us all the time. If we're not getting in it or getting on it or going down to the edge, then it's affecting our atmosphere, the beautiful air quality, the weather.
"So I'm not surprised that people would respond strongly to the proposal both for and against it.
"It makes a lot of sense to me that it raises lots of passions and fears as well as hopes, I think - fears for losing things but also hopes for a different kind of environmental future."
Dr Williams, Dr Ihlein, Dr Hamylton and Dr Gibbs have spent a decade combining their interdisciplinary insights in a bid to better understand climate change, but City+Sea marks the first time they've focused on their own backyard.
They're hoping that locals who visit the exhibition will help them shed light on the way the ocean is inextricably entwined with life in Wollongong.
"The research project is really all about what happens when we bring different perspectives together," Dr Gibbs said.
"Everyone understands places differently, and we're convinced that when you bring very different perspectives together, you learn new things.
"So we're trying to bring together the perspectives of a scientist, a social scientist and artists, but also bring in the perspectives of the people viewing the exhibition.
"We've invited people to contribute their own thoughts as part of the exhibition."
There's comfortable seats and beanbags where visitors can relax and watch the film projection for as long as they like.
There's also tables and chairs where people can sit and fill out a sheet of paper with some prompts to "elicit people's reflections on the Illawarra and the sea", and an open invitation to share their own stories.
"There's a perspex box where people can pop those notes or they can email me directly with their ideas, sharing anything that they like about the place," Dr Gibbs said.
"What we're hoping is that we'll collect a whole range of beautiful responses.
"And we have an idea that we'd like to pull together some kind of publication that might bring people's ideas together."
City+Sea is showing at UOW Gallery (building 29 of the Wollongong campus) from Monday to Wednesday, 10am to 4pm, or by appointment, until September 11.
