RED

DIRT

HYMNS

A hymnal to the country under our feet.
A living songbook more than four years in the making, Andrew Ford’s hymnal brings together the words of sixteen contemporary Australian writers – poets, essayists and folksingers – in songs of praise, awe, grief, hope, joy, and natural splendour.

Today we mostly associate hymns with Christian worship, but hymns have a longer history – from ancient Egypt, to Hurrian hymns, Vedic verse and Chinese poetry. Ford’s antipodean take on hymnody takes the core features of a hymn – strophic poetry, and memorable, singable tunes, designed to be sung by whoever is at hand, and offers up a book of praise dedicated not to a god, but to the land.

Commissioned in the midst of COVID-19, the poetry that underpins the Red Dirt Hymns tells stories of bushfire and flood, dark clouds and abundant gardens, long evenings around a camp-fire, and singing back to birds. Felicity Plunkett’s Respair is as fitting opening as could be. A song of solace, ‘respair’ is fresh hope, a pathway to recovery from ‘despair’. Inspired by the Netflix documentary of the same name, My Octopus Teacher instructs us about the cycles of life, while John Kinsella’s Hymn of the Garden captures the fragile optimism of the gardener: “always, the hope of abundance”. Finally, Mark Wakeley’s To Whom Do We Sing asks the questions threaded throughout these hymns: “where do we turn? Where do we find comfort, courage on earth?” Phillip Harvey answers: ‘This is to you.’

Red Dirt Hymns unfolds to the evocative imagery of Sammy Hawker, whose art is created within the fabric of country itself: saltwater, limestone, and eucalypt. Hawker’s chromatograms are acts of co-creation with natural elements and found materials. Developed by Russian-Italian botanist Mikhail Tsvet in the 1900s, chromatography is a chemical process that separates plant pigments. Hawker has adapted this process by using organic matter, mixing it with sodium hydroxide and inviting the substance to visually express itself over filter paper soaked with silver nitrate. Entirely unpredictable, these images are an expression of the material itself, the rudimentary substances of life itself.

“Everyone’s red dirt under the clouds.” – Philip Harvey

Developed in collaboration with Roland Peelman AM

Artists

AJ America

mezzo soprano
Lucien Fischer

baritone
Hilary Geddes

guitar
Veronica Milroy

soprano
Rachel Mink

soprano
Freya Schack-Arnott

cello
Alasdair Stretch

bass
Dan Walker

tenor

Andrew Ford OAM

composer
Roland Peelman AM

director
Sammy Hawker

artist

SAMMY HAWKER: PROJECT ALCHEMY

Sammy Hawker is an Australian based visual artist working predominantly on Ngunawal/Ngunnawal/Ngambri Country [Canberra Region, ACT]. Her work is driven by an interest in the immaterial and material presences within sites, spaces and the body.

In her practice, Sammy considers ways she can respectfully facilitate the voice of more-than entities through experimental photographic techniques. Sammy has co-created work with oceans, honeybees, eucalyptus trees and even human ashes. In the making of these works she recognises a distinct visual logic emerge from the material resonance of these more-than human contributors. Her work raises questions about the sentience and memory of materials and places.

Many of Sammy’s works have evolved from ongoing relationships with Traditional Custodians, scientists & researchers, and other relevant practitioners. Considering the sentience of the more-than human cultivates an ethos of empathy, wonder and care. It enhances our capacity to live with awareness and is a rational way of moving forward in an age of environmental crisis.

In 2023, Project Alchemy brought together 15 artists from South-East Australia to make projects in response to the Black Summer Fires. As part of this Sammy Hawker invited communities of Canberra (Ngunawal/Ngunnawal/Ngambri Country), Braidwood (Walbunja Country) and from along the South Coast (the Yuin Nation) to deliver her a few leaves or a small piece of bark from a tree that felt special to them. Trees are quiet witnesses to our experiences of birth, death, relationship breakdowns, spiritual breakthroughs and the general passing of life.

Using this tree-matter Sammy created 64 chromatograms. Chromatograms are created when a solution of the ground tree matter, sodium hydroxide and water, spreads over a 9cm filter paper soaked in silver nitrate. The hues and patterns that form over the paper cannot be predetermined or controlled - the final result feels like a self-portrait of the tree. Red Dirt Hymns is accompanied by a unique video artwork by Sammy Hawker, which features 32 chromatograms.

Eucalyptus Glider Habitat Tree - Uncle Owen

Eucalyptus (species unknown) - Elle & Emily

POETRY

Respair
Felicity Plunkett

The sky kneels down to greet you here.
Your earbuds in you wear its light.
ascend the craggy evening hill.
Your leaf-like fleeting days.

Song of solace,
song of bended knee,
song of twilight and calm.
Drift leaf, grace note, footfall, footfall.

You’re sure of fret and sure of chord,
sure of music’s onward walk.
Your footfall’s pulse: console, console.
You rise above lean trees.

Song of branches,
song of shadow-flow,
song of scatter and glow.
Drift-leaf, grace-note, footfall, footfall.

You fare alone by one faint star,
to climb the silver water tower,
you stretch your arms to falling dusk
to reach gold sloping sun.

Song of ladder,
song of high above,
song of hand over hand.
Drift-leaf, grace-note, footfall, footfall.

Swift clouds collect your broken words,
they tune and grace each fallen note
you climb to hope while dark comes home,
Pitch perfect song tonight.

Drift-leaf, grace-note, footfall.

My Octopus Teacher
Alison Flett

The octopus  taught me the depths of the sea can be clear.
That raindrops are something our minds are  conditioned to hear.
The ocean,  though dark, can explode in  the notes of a  hymn.
Among all the  horrors, pick out the small colours
and smuggle  them into your  skin.

Although she is  shy her curious eye
peeks out from the hush of her  den.
Slicking into the  open,  she shows me what she holds within.
The colours wave lightly  like music that  gently crescendos in rainbow profusion
then fades from her skin as she moves back within
as if it was all an illusion.

When her numerous arms explore the sea’s charms
I can see how connected she is.
She makes herself coral, she makes herself ocean,
- I wish I could be just like this.
Though we’ve broken our ties and that’s why we feel so alone,
the salt water we carry means we are still married
to oceans that once were our home.

I knew that one day
there’d be eggs to lay
and that would mean her life would end.
When her birth work is doneshe’s exhausted and lifeless, eats nothing,
just lies in her den till the ocean comes for her and carries her body away.
One arm lifts in a wave
the last sign that she gave
as she entered the dark of the sea.

An octopus life is as short as a knife
slitting open a wallet of fish.
But time can be measured
in rain or the bones of a wish.
Just know that you swim
through a nebulous, dim, blue
water that once was the sky.
We’re made of the same
as the things that we name
so wave before saying goodbye.

Waiting for the Clouds
Martha Marlow

Together we sit
Looking out to sea
With her ears at attention
Waiting for the clouds

Together we sit
Looking out to sea
The light shifts and lengthens
Waiting for the clouds

Together we sit
Looking out to sea
With gulls forever circling
Waiting for the clouds

Together we wait
Looking out to sea
The sea forever opening
Waiting for the clouds
That did not come today

Dark Cloud
Ellen van Neervan

Dark cloud over land and lake and sea
Casting shadow over country hear our plea
Let us shelter our spirit and our history

Dark cloud over land and lake and sea
Fire crawling up every tree hear our plea
Let us not lose our ceremony

Dark cloud leave, Dark cloud leave
Lift this heavy smoke and let us see
Dark cloud leave, Dark cloud leave
Lift this heavy smoke and let us breathe

Dark cloud over land and lake and sea
Fire crawling up every tree hear our plea
Let us shelter our spirit and our history

Isolation Hymn
Judith Bishop

Let the quaver in my heart
Raise a tremor in my song
Let them know that I am trembling
Let them know that I’m alone

Breath was all air between us
Then they told us not to breathe
It was too late for my neighbour
It was too late for my love

Sing me higher love and hold me
As the water rises slowly
May our voices be a river
Ever flowing to the sea

When they say we’re together
Even though we lie apart
When they say there’s hearts on fire
Spreading ashes in the dark

I’d have sung you back to courage
Life was knocking at our food
But my voice was air and breathing
Wasn’t easy anymore

Sing me higher love and hold me
As the water rises slowly
May our voices be a river
Ever flowing to the sea

Let the quaver in my heart
Raise a tremor in my song
Let them know that I am trembling
Let them know that I’m alone

Hymn of the Garden: A Prologue
John Kinsella

Always the hope of abundance a garden is complex
What grass where and how the results will show
Silver eyes and thornbills eat their fill
A sun skink basks at the edge of a raised bed

Some plants are insect repellents
Some are masking agents
The lush growth you seek to protect against certain insects
While other insects you celebrate as they pollinate

The contradictions of the garden, the syntax of contradictions
Always the hope of abundance to side track from presence
What grows in how what in drought can glow
Always the hope for abundance a garden is complex

Stand and Weep
John Kinsella

Who is standing in the dunes
The car parks, the nurseries
Tending and bearing the weight

Who is standing in the kitchens
The offices, the wards
Clearing and bearing the torment

If not the mothers, then who?
Where our sorrowful words,
defend, cherish, weep

Who is standing in the doorways
The streets, on the bridges
Holding and bearing burdens

If not the mothers, then who?
Where our sorrowful words,
Defend, cherish, weep

The Shape of a Vase
John Kinsella

Sometimes the world is too loud
And you hear it through walls
As plates being stacked
Sometimes you listen in case
They chip or to hear what
Is now being placed

You listen through half-shut eyes
Aware of light running
Thin under the door
Someone turns up the music
You hear it although you’re
Already asleep

You hear the beat of it now
Like the mouse were a box
The rooms made of sound
In bed you can hear the couch
The coffee tables set:
Coasters, no glasses

A child learns the shape
Of a vase late at night, learns the
Ringing of china
Two voices are no voices
Two people are no one
An argument ends

A child learns the hollowness
And more: if it holds
Anger or tense calm
Out the front of a jacaranda
A wane frangipani
A maybush, some grass

A child learns the shape
Of the kitchen pretending to sleep
Listens to is all
Learns the sound of dishes places
Of the cutlery drawer
Stuttering closed

Between Birds
Merlinda Bobis

I’m between the call of the crow
And the trill of the wee-bill
I’m between the rush of the ‘Oh!’
And the hush if the still