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EXHIBITION
Free
5 July - 7 September 2025
Foyer Space, Bathurst Regional Art Gallery
Bathurst Regional Art Gallery (BRAG) presents Mystery of Missing Westerlies by Ecological Gyre Theory — Chantelle Mitchell (VIC) and Jaxon Waterhouse (NT).
Mystery of Missing Westerlies is a body of work emerging in response to a news article from April 7, 1950 which details “extraordinary weather”; a local manifestation of global atmospheric change, being the disappearance of westerly winds across New South Wales in response to planetary changes sweeping the northern hemisphere. Working across installation, video and intervention, Mystery of Missing Westerlies considers pasts, presents and futures in an interconnected planetary atmospheric frame.
The disappearance of the westerly winds is itself both a historical anomaly and a planetary omen. We treat this climatic rupture as an atmospheric case file, a study in atmospheric disappearance, inviting consideration of the interplay between absence, evidence, and the forces shaping our world. Here, wind becomes both subject and metaphor—an invisible actor whose movements carry sediments, shape deserts, and drive oceanic currents, but also a narrative force whose disappearance tells of shifting global patterns. Embedded within this body of work are material traces of evidence and investigation, material clues in a wider investigation of climate, memory, and time.
Ecological Gyre Theory
Chantelle Mitchell (VIC) and Jaxon Waterhouse (NT) are long term collaborators, working together as Ecological Gyre Theory, a multidisciplinary artistic research project.
This project manifests as curatorial practice, experimental writing, sculptural and installation practice and academic research. Together, they have presented exhibitions engaging with the confluence of rivers and high tides for Sawtooth ARI; earthquakes, landslides and the movement of the earth for Spectrum, Edith Cowan University, the whaling and petroculture industries for Sawtooth ARI/Cool Change contemporary; communication across oceans and place with semaphore for FELTspace; and with an ongoing series, Interstellar Return presented at the University of Melbourne, Watch this Space, and MEANWHILE (NZ), among others. They work across archives, sculpture, photography and film, in a manner responsive to subject and context.
In 2023, Chantelle and Jaxon were declared the Monash University Art, Design and Architecture Gallery Curators in Residence, presenting three exhibitions and a series of programs with Australian and international artists in consideration of concepts drawn from the theoretical frameworks of anthropologist Tim Ingold. They have published widely across contemporary theory and ecology, and Jaxon is one half of Heart of Hearts press.
Together, they are co-directors of Ordinance, a contemporary arts space in Narrm.
Public Programs
Exhibition Opening, Friday 4 July, 6PM - RSVP essential
Artist Talk via Live Stream, Saturday 12 July, 11AM - RSVP essential