Sweet Water
In Sweet Water, Caitlin Fargher creates a haunted oasis that reimagines Hadley’s in the 1800s when the hotel housed a lush fernery and inventive pastry shop.
A three-tiered fountain inhabits the atrium, tiled with clay dug up near the hotel and glazed with the ash of a fallen casuarina tree. Surrounding the water-feature is an ornate garden of sticky toffee flowers, glowing red amongst the ferns. The fountain imagines the rivulet and marshlands of nipaluna - now diverted underneath our streets - welling up and resurfacing sunken stories.
Coloured-glass patterns of an historic leadlight are mirrored in toffee and eucalyptus sap, poised atop a tall table, inviting us to look up. The delicate, transient toffee patterns draw upon place and the precariousness of the colonial system. Where there is light, there is shadow.
With its raw, sweet and muddy materials, Sweet Water speaks of Hobart’s past and the settler’s longing to create desired landscapes, control nipaluna’s systems and sweep truths behind facades. But while darkness ripples through the space, there is hope for a sustainable and engaged future, a paradise to be.
Materials:
Fountain ~ Clay collected from nipaluna and Deep Bay, ash from a casuarina tree that fell in the big storms of 2018, water sourced from the Rivulet, scrap metal and recycled PVC pipe, water pump, silicone, cement, sugar
Table ~ Found table legs, salvaged celery top pine, glass, sugar, eucalyptus sap, resin