MUNDARING Arts Centre Inc invites audiences to experience the Mundaring Weir from the different perspectives of five multi-disciplinary artists who form Five Tides Collective, for their exhibition, Weir on a High Place taking place from September 6 to November 8.

Named after the five seas, or rather the five cultural heritages they hail from, this collective of artists from across Perth, includes Diane Keating, Junko Kitamura, Nadia Rasheed, Carolyn White and Annette Wiguna.

Unpacking this layered, environmentally diverse and historically rich location, the exhibition explores the Weir as a meeting place between water, nature, history and industry, as it intersects with the artists personal histories and experiences.

The artists developed this new body of work through repeat visits and collaborative fieldwork – responding to the Weir through observation, walking, cataloguing, sketching and collecting – they have each uncovered personal connections to a landscape that is both familiar and ever changing.

Featuring painting, printmaking, digital collage, textiles, ceramics and mixed media, Weir on a High Place reveals the many ways a place can be experienced and recorded.

The artists consider the Weir through themes of migration, belonging, spirituality, heritage, water security and the relationship between built and natural environments, and informed by their own context and everyday practice, each artist encounters the site through a unique artistic lens.

For Keating, the Weir becomes a place to reflect on migration and the search for home, drawing parallels between human movement and the seasonal migration of birds.

Kitamura responds to the quiet tension between the industrial structures and surrounding forest, blurring the lines between natural and human made, while Rasheed turns her attention to the Weir’s architecture and infrastructure, exploring the site’s heritage, water security and ideas of containment.

For White, the site is encountered through all five senses – collecting artistic impressions of the natural environment through a process of repeated observations and exploration.

Whilst Wiguna, returning to the Weir in search of solitude, healing and renewed perspective, reflects on the fragile balance between human intervention and the forces of nature.

Together, Five Tides Collective reveal Mundaring Weir as more than a feat of engineering or a familiar and beloved Perth Hills’ landmark.

Rather, through their different perspectives and practices showcased in the exhibition, they consider how landscapes hold stories, memories and meaning, and how our relationship with water connects us to place, history and one another.

Weir on a High Place is on display at Mundaring Arts Centre 7190 Great Eastern Highway, Mundaring from September 6 to November 8.

For further information and public program details visit the website www.mundaringartscentre.com.au or contact cultural program coordinator Georgina Taylor at gtaylor@mungarin gartscentre.com.au