Jane Rendell, SILVER (Hobart: A Published Event, 2017). 96pp., 32 illustrations.

SILVER, is a ‘fictionella’ as Justy Phillips would have it, and was commissioned by artists Justy Phillips and Margaret Woodword as part of Lost Rocks. Its narrative was drawn out of my visits to a number of sites connected to BHP Billiton, including its ‘birth place’, Broken Hill, a town in the Barrier Ranges of south Australia, where a mineral lode rich in silver was discovered in the late nineteenth century.

http://www.apublishedevent.net/projects/lost-rocks/editions/a-slow-publishing-event

In March 2017, SILVER was reconfigured, in a Courthouse, a historical building that is part of the West Coast Heritage Centre in Zeehan, west Tasmania, a mining town also founded on silver, and connected to one of the early proprietors of the Broken Hill mine. Here new voices were added to the multi-vocal narrative of the fictionella, and redistributed through the six clearly labelled positions of the Courthouse – Witness, Clerk of Court, Police Prosecutor & Lawyer, Defendant, Magistrate, and Audience. SILVER: A Courthouse Drama for Six Positions deals with issues of justice and ethics connected to mining, including reference to specific events related to BHP Billiton, for example the catastrophic tailings dam burst in Brazil in November 2015, which occurred as I was making my way to Broken Hill.

http://www.apublishedevent.net/projects/lost-rocks/editions/crocoite-crocoite-silver-silver-lead