Inside a refurbished former railway goods store in Sydney's Carriageworks precinct, the atmosphere is hushed — thanks in part to the sound-absorbing effect of 300 tonnes of soil, which layers the floor, up to a metre in depth.

The building's windows are covered in black vinyl, through which sunlight penetrates via small laser-cut holes — falling on a number of individuals who are raking, spraying and testing the soil.

These are local artists, students and community gardeners, invited by New York-based artist Asad Raza to collaborate in his large-scale project, Absorption (aka Kaldor Public Art Project 34).

Absorption features 300 tonnes of soil made from materials like coffee grounds, cuttlebones, spent barley, lime, legumes and green waste. ( ABC Arts: Teresa Tan )

Over the course of 16 days this month, these "cultivators" will augment the dirt-load with industrial by-products and organic matter sourced from the greater Sydney region (cuttlefish bones from the east coast, spent barley from a brewery in Marrickville, red earth from Cobbitty, coffee grounds from the Kaldor office), constantly tending and testing the resulting "neo-soil".

Local artists — including Daniel Boyd, who created the window installation, and singer-songwriter Chun Yin Rainbow Chan — will use the soil as an inspiration and canvas for new works.

Visual artist Daniel Boyd says that his window installation is about using light to project realities onto the landscape. ( ABC Arts: Teresa Tan )

The cultivators will wear reflective jackets made by artist Agatha Gothe-Snape, with linings from John Kaldor's former fabric company.

The final piece of the puzzle is the public, who are encouraged to interact with the cultivators and the artworks, help tend the soil and, ultimately, to take a bucket home with them.

Raza describes his method of involving the audience in his works as a "metabolic process".

"I like to engage the people in a different kind of way," he said.

"The visitors are metabolised into the show by interacting with people who are doing something there — whether it's hitting a tennis ball, or planting a tree, or in this case, creating the [soil] mixture."

A reflection of our society



Absorption is the latest in a series initiated by local art entrepreneur and philanthropist John Kaldor in 1969, which has brought major international artists including Marina Abramovic, Jeff Koons and Sol Lewitt to Sydney to create new works for (and in some cases collaborating with) the public.

Raza and Kaldor met in March 2018, when the artist visited Australia.

Asad Raza worked in collaboration with environmental scientists and gardeners to realise Absorption. ( Supplied: Michael Waite )

Raza's artworks are usually inspired by the site or space in which they exist. They are best described as "experiences" that involve ritual (formal or otherwise), and are premised on interaction with the audience.

In his 2017 work Untitled (Plot for Dialogue), for example, Raza invited visitors to take part in a tennis-like game on a bright orange court that he had created in a deconsecrated 16th-century church.

In his work Home Show (2015), he invited members of the public into his home, for a guided tour that included artworks and objects contributed by artist friends as well as family members.

Raza said he wants his work to be positive and non-exclusive.

"I want people to come to these shows — it's not just for the brilliant art lover who understands all the details," he said.

The artist explored several venues in Sydney before settling on a site that spoke to his interest in the Industrial Revolution and modernism: the former clothing and general store for NSW Railways.

Megan Alice Clune says her work is "a musical piece that changes and shifts as the moisture level of the soil changes". ( ABC Arts: Teresa Tan )

The resulting work, Absorption, seeks to create a space for "public rituals".

"I feel that the public sphere, which is one of the inventions of modernism that I'm an admirer of, is being neglected and fragmented, with people just looking at their screen," Raza said.

"An art exhibition can be something open to all, regardless of their group belonging. The experience can let them be reflective of their society, the one that we have created in 2019."

Cultivating a community

Raza worked with scientists, including soil expert Alex McBratney from University of Sydney, to "find a way to use the compounds from society and industrial activity, and recombine [them] for the product to actually be used again as soil for people to take away at the end of the project".

Raza described the result as "Anthropocene soil; the soil can only be created through human intervention."

He then enlisted local artists to undertake their own "interventions", working with them to create works that responded to the ideas of absorption and soil.

These clay and phosphate cuttlefish are added to the soil to enrich it. ( Supplied: Pedro Greig )

Jana Hawkins-Andersen contributes directly to soil growth with her installation, Swell: figurines of leeches in clay, made by the cultivators on site and then broken down and raked into the soil over the course of the project.

Worimi artist Dean Cross also made a material contribution to the soil, presenting a mounded kilogram of sand, collected from K'gari (Fraser Island), which was subsequently integrated into the mix.

The work is titled 1kg of Earth from 1000kms Away.

"It's trying to embody, perhaps, my own familial displacement of growing up on [my ancestral] country … trying to understand that diaspora sensation," Cross said.

Artist Khaled Sabsabi says soil, and its past and present, should be important to those who live on the land. ( ABC Arts: Teresa Tan )

Khaled Sabsabi's work, Unseen, meanwhile, forms the literal foundation of the exhibition: hidden under the soil lie 20 pieces of Kikuyu turf, a tropical species of grass.

There is a visible component to the work, involving painted-over photographic prints, but the artist said his choice to have an unseen component was deliberate and crucial.

"The only thing that is seen are 20 photographs, painted over — which, when you look at them, you can't make sense between whether they are photographs or paintings," Sabsabi said.

The work was inspired by the artist's long-standing interest in and practice of Sufism.

"Asad said he was thinking of covering the whole place with dirt, and [talked about] the link to absorption, which is an important focal point of my work," Sabsabi said.

"Especially within the Sufi teachings, it's about defeating the self and the ego — and within that, there is a contradiction because art is all about ego, it's about self."

By situating his project on a work by Sabsabi, a Lebanese diaspora artist, Raza implicitly recognises the contributions migrants have made to Australia.

Boyd's work, meanwhile, mediates the light, acknowledging the Indigenous leadership that is needed to help the country grow.

Kaldor Public Art Project 34: Asad Raza runs daily from 10am-6pm until May 19, at The Clothing Store (5 Carriageworks Way, Eveleigh).

The ABC-produced documentary It All Started With a Stale Sandwich, about Kaldor Public Art Projects, premieres at Sydney Film Festival in June.

