PIPES (2025)

PIPES (2025)

PIPES flows through a collaborative process between artist Eugenia Lim and plumber and gas fitter Jonni Te Waa. PIPES is a fountain and site-specific sculpture that practises a playful, ecological and relational approach to bodies, labour, waters, and the living systems they are enmeshed within. PIPES takes the everyday vernacular of plumbing as materiality and form, while bringing the often hidden labour of plumbing and art-making into relation as connective, world-building practices. 

Tracing the flow and cycle of living waters through the bodies and metabolisms of Bankstown, the liquid that flows through PIPES merges ancient and contemporary bodies of water: a custom kombucha brewed with Bankstown drinking water, Dharug and diasporic plants; water collected from Bankstown-area river systems; and ocean water sourced from Manly, near the North Head Treatment Plant, where Bankstown’s treated wastewater flows into the Pacific. 

As Uncle Chris Tobin shares: “Badu (water) runs through us all—the tangible manifestation of the Aboriginal teachings—that we are part of Country. In that way, badu connects us with our ancestors, who also remain part of Country today.”

From the site-based microbial community that comes into being within the sculpture, to its honouring of water and collaborative labour as life forces of bodies and land, PIPES is created in dialogue with the history and ecology of Dharug lands and waters, and contemporary Bankstown as a vibrant hub of diasporic Asian, SWANA-region and intercultural exchange.

Photographs of the installation at Bankstown Arts Centre by Zan Wimberley, 2025. PIPES was originally commissioned for Gut Waters, curated by Vanessa Bartlett and curatorial collaborator Rachael Kiang.