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The 2007 Hunter storms commenced on the 8 June 2007 and caused extensive flooding, damage and loss of life in the Hunter Region and the Central Coast. An intense low pressure system developed on the night of 7 June and over the next 36 hours the state's Hunter and Central Coast areas were battered by the system's strong winds and torrential rain. The total death toll was 10.
Rainfall exceeded 300 mm and a natural disaster was declared. Nearly 6000 State Emergency Service volunteers, including crews from across NSW, ACT, Queensland and Victoria worked in the area and responded to over 10,000 calls for assistance.
The high rainfall resulted in extensive flooding in the Cogewai Creek valley and the creek rose by over 12 metres in a few hours, preceded by a 'tidal' wave of floodwater which filled the valley. Jacek's studio was submerged to a depth of 5 metres and tools and sculptures swept out into the valley. Most sculptures were recovered, some from up to 1 km along the creek bed after the waters subsided.
Tsunamii is a body of work inspired by this force and intensity of water. It explores the dynamic flow and force of rivers, waves, currents, tsunami and storms and their interaction with geographic and geological features – rocks, river banks, reefs, coral, seaweed forests. These works are significantly influenced by mythical and archaeological imagery, such as the Chimaera and ancient megalithic structures.
Constructed through additive processes, the components are pre-formed and joined symbiotically. Thus, they relate to each other as surfaces, as individual entities and as parts of the whole. The interplay of the spaces and hollows between the components is as important as the individual parts themselves – tension results from the desire to integrate these spaces and to explore how they respond to each other, the physical elements, and the piece as a whole.
In this series, I continue to use the same marine metaphors as in the Reef series: the water and the sea are represented by the galvanised steel 'framework' elements (in Tsunami1, a continuous u-shape with long parallel arms for the calm sea, and awkwardly angled and disjointed for the stormy/angry sea - in this instance the tsunami wave), and the naturally-patinated oxidised corten steel elements (weathered by rain and water) represent the land, reefs, the sea bottom . . . . the land at the edge of the sea.
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