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River Undain's still image

River Undain

12’ / Single channel/ Digital video

This single channel video work ruminates at the epicentre of one world's largest-known gold deposits located in the South Gobi region of Mongolia.  It was commissioned by the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

River Undain is a meditation on tending and remembrance. As the camera roves over a desiccated, lunar landscape, camel herders evoke a lost waterway which sustained life in the desert for millennia.Listen to this work. You’ll hear the voice of Bayarjargal Chimedtseren, a rare female master of Mongolian throat singing or ‘long song’ (Urtiin duu). Practised by nomads for centuries, these guttural chants ring out over ancestral lands to imitate sounds of nature.
In the steppes around Khanbogd, they’ve become songs of loss, solastalgia and rage.

— Ruby Arrowsmith-Todd

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