Recovery is an eco-arts project exploring Ecology and Art to celebrate the work of Citizen Scientists in the Blue Mountains, Australia.

The Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area is over a million hectares of diverse wilderness. Eighty percent of this area was significantly affected by the Australian 'Black Summer' fires of 2019-20. In some areas these impacts were catastrophic, causing damage and most likely permanent loss of habitat with decimation of species, including already threatened flora and fauna.  

For Recovery, art works drew on data collected by dozens of citizen scientists who are monitoring environmental changes right across the Blue Mountains, including the recovery from the Black Summer fires. The work is co-ordinated by the Blue Mountains World Heritage Institute in conjunction with the National Parks and Wildlife Service and the Blue Mountains City Council. 

Our group of passionate ecologists, citizen scientists and artists came together over a period of ten months to investigate the effects of the 2019-20 fires. They looked into the trauma, deaths and the impact on the flora and fauna and the remarkable processes of habitat and species recovery – through a series of workshops, collective interactions, and storytelling.

Individual artists and small groups of artists and ecologists then collaborated to produce the series of art works for the Eco-Arts Space, based on collected and archived data and personal and shared experiences.

The COVID pandemic had significant impacts for our project. Faced with lockdown conditions, we used innovative on-line workshops. What we first envisaged as a face to face exhibition of works at the Blue Mountains Cultural Centre became our on-line exhibition. 

Through all of this, the Recovery project became a rallying point for artists and citizen scientists, one that sustained our practice, and gave the concept of Recovery additional meaning.

We hope you enjoy the work.