The Wrong Kind of Beauty is the Bloom Collective’s embodied, experiential response to the fragility of the landscape produced by the gullying process. The harrowing and ongoing drama of the landscape, simultaneously reveals moments of delicate sculptural beauty, explored here through poetry, movement, sound and visual documentation.

The photographs and videos presented are from site at Murphy’s Creek near Toowoomba, generously made accessible by Gerald Handley, the property owner. Printed fabrics and poetry were created as a response to our first visit. All audio visual work included here was made in the gullies in a single day, on the second visit to the site. We invite you to listen, look, experience and rethink these familiar landscapes.

In addition, biochrome images of soil featured on paper, fabrics, and time-lapse videos, were created with soil samples collected from the site, and from the Bowen River catchment. Biochromes present traces of micro-organic and chemical transformations recorded over several weeks on photographic emulsions, and depict the diversity in soil types and show that even highly erodible soils are living.

Before the Bloom Collective met members of the Landscape Sciences, we didn’t know the word gully could be a verb. Gullying is a natural process. The Grand Canyon was created by gullying over millions of years. Human activity, such as land clearing and overgrazing can contribute to gullying, causing rapid land degradation and soil erosion. The latest scientific studies indicate that gullies are a major source of sediment flowing to the Great Barrier Reef (Bartley et al., 2017). The Bloom Collective were introduced to gully research by members of DES, identifying causes, measuring rates of change, tracing the effects on ecosystem, and considering rehabilitation options. The Wrong Kind of Beauty ruminates on all of these concerns.