Forest
2022


Growth> death> coalification> extraction> reduction> return. From the Industrial Revolution onward, sections of humanity have dug vast amounts of coal from the earth leaving voids where forests once stood.













Yasmin Smith
Forest 2022
eleven coal fly ash glazes on stoneware slip (details)
top to bottom:
glaze 11: Tarong (Tarong Power Station, South Burnett region, Queensland)
glaze 10: Mount Piper (Mount Piper Power Station, Lithgow, New South Wales)
glaze 9: Wallerawang (Wallerawang Power Station, Lithgow, New South Wales)
glaze 8: Millmerran (Millmerran Power Station, Darling Downs region, Queensland)
glaze 7: Bayswater (Bayswater Power Station, Hunter region, New South Wales)
glaze 6: Eraring (Eraring Power Station, Lake Macquarie, New South Wales)
glaze 5: Vales Point (Vales Point Power Station, Lake Macquarie, New South Wales)
glaze 4: Gladstone (Gladstone Power Station, Gladstone, Queensland)
glaze 3: Hazelwood (Hazelwood Power Station, Latrobe Valley, Victoria)
glaze 2: Yallourn (Yallourn Power Station, Latrobe Valley, Victoria)
glaze 1: Energy Australia (unknown location)


Forest speaks both to the Anthropocene and to the most severe extinction event in earth’s history: the End-Permian, caused by massive volcanic eruptions 252 million years ago. At this time, 90% of species on earth became extinct, including the giant Gondwanan forest-dweller Glossopteris, which along with other prehistoric vegetation generated much of the black coal in Australia. In Australia today, the concentrated ash of these ancient forests is the by-product of industrial scale coal burning and is stored in massive ash dams next to power stations that in New South Wales are mostly unlined and leach heavy metal contaminants into the soil and groundwater below. Over the last few decades there have been massive efforts by community activists and environmental organisations in Australia to bring attention to the scale of this issue. Significant work is also being done by scientists and industry to remediate these sites and reuse this by-product, which makes up 20% of Australia’s entire domestic waste stream. The grey background image of these pages is a work I produced earlier this year for my exhibition ‘Elemental Life’ at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. Ash Grey 2025 is a wall paint made using recycled coal ash from the Lake Macquarie region in New South Wales. The ash is collected by cement companies and used as an additive in their products.

In 2022 I completed a four-year research project into coal ash in Australia. Through collaborations with community, scientists and industrial workers, I collected ash from eleven different power stations in Australia to make the glazes that furnish ceramic casts of coal rocks. The glazes in Forest show a gradation in colour spanning a timeline of 300 million years. The lightest glazes come from the oldest black coal ash; having been underground for 250-300 million years, this coal has leached out most of its organic and inorganic life. As the seam progresses, the glazes begin to take on more colour. The youngest brown coal, that is 23-66 million years old, express a much richer glaze aesthetic as they still retain their mineral and plant memories.

Growth> death> coalification> extraction> reduction> return. From the Industrial Revolution onward, sections of humanity have dug vast amounts of coal from the earth leaving voids where forests once stood. A seam of geological time is removed. The coalified remains of these ancient forests are burned and its ashes resown back into geological time, returning the ashes to the earth’s surface and creating a new stratum. 

When considering the massive, industrialised extraction and use of coal undertaken by humans since the mid-19th century as a contributing factor to changes in earth’s systems and climate, I think about the morphological changes that this activity leaves behind: the physical void 300 million years down, where coal was removed from geological time and the drastic changes to contemporary terrain to reach those depths. To officially enter the Anthropocene into the geological record, however, evidence of humanity must be defined in geochemical strata as it is laid down on the earth and contributes to a new geological age. If you ask what humans contribute to the geological fabric of the earth, one answer is fly ash from coal combustion. The spectrum of the coal-ash glazes in Forest, presents a visual understanding of this geochemical contribution and narrates this timeline over 300 million years.

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The Journal of Art & Ecology published by MA Art & Ecology, Goldsmiths, University of London

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