Wellspring: Phil Nizette and Jennifer Jones

About the work

‘Resource’ questions our responsibility to use and value resources wisely, challenging us to consider environmental impacts, the plastic we use daily and the lasting effects of production and waste. Created in 2017 as ‘Recycled Reef’ with a focus on climate change and the degradation of global reef systems, the work is now re-envisaged to challenge a wider audience and engage with a new site.

The work speaks to how the Canberra landscape was seen as a resource to be manipulated and modified to suit the needs of a city and its inhabitants. Has development been wise and fully respectful of the natural environment ? How sustainable is our city and culture ? And, what innovations are waiting to be found?
‘Resource’ is spelt out in 1.8m x 1.6m letters created from hundreds of plastic milk bottles and other waste refashioned as corals, fish and aquatic life, predominantly ‘bleached’. The letters – ‘OUR’ are coloured, the healthy reef or environment.

The environment, the materials it yields, the city and its setting are – OUR resource, OUR responsibility.

Image courtesy of the artist, photo credit: Sean Davey

About the artist

Phil Nizette and Jennifer Jones are artists and designers who specialise in creating engaging public places. They have collaborated for 21 years as Wellspring Environmental Arts & Design on public art, landscape architecture, community development and event projects around Australia and internationally. Their work responds to its community, site, context and place specific factors, often drawing on consultation, engagement and research. Wellspring has completed projects for city spaces, public parks, playgrounds, residential development estates, schools, hospitals, festivals and a range of other settings. They enjoy creating ephemeral works in unusual places. Individually Phil and Jennifer make sculptural and decorative works in a range of materials that express playfulness, connection to nature, sustainability, local history and the language of materials, as well as form and surfaces.