Helen S. Tiernan: Humpback Connecting
By Colin McHenry
THE dark, cold blue. A shape emerges from the murk, huge and grey. Somehow it is almost on top of you before your brain works out how big it is. A flash of white as a fin is raised, the leviathan turns with a grace that belies its size, and then it is gone, into the never-ending ocean.
The largest animals that have ever lived call the ocean their home. Most people never see them – those that do glimpse them from a cliff or a boat, a puff of white above a dark curve cutting the water's surface. Only a few have experienced being in the water next to them and felt the emptiness of the ocean suddenly filled with the presence of the gentle giant as its path briefly intersects your own.
THE dark, cold blue. A shape emerges from the murk, huge and grey. Somehow it is almost on top of you before your brain works out how big it is. A flash of white as a fin is raised, the leviathan turns with a grace that belies its size, and then it is gone, into the never-ending ocean.
The largest animals that have ever lived call the ocean their home. Most people never see them – those that do glimpse them from a cliff or a boat, a puff of white above a dark curve cutting the water's surface. Only a few have experienced being in the water next to them and felt the emptiness of the ocean suddenly filled with the presence of the gentle giant as its path briefly intersects your own.
|
Helen S. Tiernan's paintings bring that moment to you. The deep greens and greys are the colours of the open ocean, another world to us. The white flash of the whale's markings standing out in the gloom. The world that they live in. And the new things that they must now contend with – boats, pollution, and noise.
|
Helen S. Tiernan’s new exhibition at Berninneit presents new paintings of whales and sea Country. Born in Gippsland of Aboriginal and Irish heritage, the artist now lives in Fish Creek. Timelines is at the Berninneit art gallery from May 23 to July 12. Join the artist for the opening on Saturday, May 23, 4-6pm. Register at Timelines Opening Celebration. |
Although we seem to live in vastly different worlds, whales are, like us, mammals; they breathe air and give birth to live young that they nurse with milk. Like us, if they are fortunate, they can live for decades, and they spend this time in complex social groups. Their communication is sufficiently complex to be considered a language, and different groups have their own dialects. These are all hallmarks of intelligent beings. We do not know what they are saying in their songs, but we know that those songs can travel halfway around the planet. Whales live at a scale that is, in the truest sense of the word, awesome.
Helen S. Tiernan: White Tail with Sonic Waves Tiernan’s paintings tell us, not just of the now, but of the before; their time as land creatures that during the great Age of Mammals started to explore the fertile shorelines, and like a mermaid turned their legs into flippers. Before then, like all creatures that live on land, they originally came from the sea – mammals, along with reptiles and amphibians, are descended from fish that lived in the shallow rivers and lakes 400 million years ago, when the green of the land was only at the water's edge and the rest of the continents looked like a red Martian landscape.
And before then – when the world was ice; when the seas turned to rust; when the air was poison. We go back further, to the start of our world, its birth from fire, rock and dust. But now, the planet is blue. What have whales seen, and what is held in their stories?
Humans and whales have shared this world for but a moment. For a few thousand years humans have worked with whales, using their help to find food in the ocean. But we have also hunted whales, for food, oil and bone. Indigenous cultures around the world have worked both with and against whales, and many have their own stories and songlines about that relationship.
And before then – when the world was ice; when the seas turned to rust; when the air was poison. We go back further, to the start of our world, its birth from fire, rock and dust. But now, the planet is blue. What have whales seen, and what is held in their stories?
Humans and whales have shared this world for but a moment. For a few thousand years humans have worked with whales, using their help to find food in the ocean. But we have also hunted whales, for food, oil and bone. Indigenous cultures around the world have worked both with and against whales, and many have their own stories and songlines about that relationship.
"Tiernan’s paintings tell us, not just of the now, but of the before; their time as land creatures that during the great Age of Mammals started to explore the fertile shorelines." |
Now, in the age of industry and agriculture, we have changed the land, turned the forest and grasslands into fields and cities, and eventually we used the bodies of tiny creatures to power the ships that could catch the largest and fastest of the whales. We caught so many that they nearly vanished.
Now, they slowly return – but to a world full of alien sounds and chemical pollution. Now, we compete with them for the very food they live on. How will they survive the ruthless competition from the techno-ape? Or, will we learn to live in peace with the largest animals that have ever existed, these majestic creatures who share our world.
Colin McHenry is an ecologist and palaeontologist who studies the reptiles and mammals that have returned to living in the sea, and their relationships with land and ocean. He lives in South Gippsland and spends as much time as possible in the waters of the Bass Strait.
Now, they slowly return – but to a world full of alien sounds and chemical pollution. Now, we compete with them for the very food they live on. How will they survive the ruthless competition from the techno-ape? Or, will we learn to live in peace with the largest animals that have ever existed, these majestic creatures who share our world.
Colin McHenry is an ecologist and palaeontologist who studies the reptiles and mammals that have returned to living in the sea, and their relationships with land and ocean. He lives in South Gippsland and spends as much time as possible in the waters of the Bass Strait.