Artist: Loren Kronemyer
Work: Salt the Earth
Location: Cockburn, Western Australia
Loren Kronemyer’s ongoing project Salt the Earth focuses on seawater desalination, a practice that sustains the lifestyle and population of Perth residents. The Perth Seawater Desalination Plant in Kwinana, which supplies the city with 20% or more of its water, turns seawater from Cockburn Sound into nearly 140 megalitres of drinking water per day. This is used to support the growing population of Perth and it fuels the culture of decorative gardening. Working with botanists and urban gardeners, Kronemyer developed Salt the Earth to replace and transform gardens in the City of Vincent with halophilic, or salt-loving, plants. These guerrilla gardens of salt-tolerant plants were watered with the brackish runoff from the desalination plant – both an absurd effort and a poetic gesture to absorb and offset the imbalance created by the population’s demands.
