Linda Ravenswood’s work Digging a hole was an endurance performance - imagined as a visual, semiotic, meditation and action portrait. The event took place during the artist’s menstrual cycle, making working in the dust, in the sun, and on the rocks ever more enlivening. Initially, the piece was imagined to reside / occur at Llano Del Rio, and to incorporate those lineage aspects of the arduous nature of attempting to work in challenging terrains, as the people of the colony did one hundred years ago. With the added facility, consciousness and animation of negotiating in that visceral context of women’s bodies, the piece was vitalized. The site specificity was enhanced by the ideation of the nature of women’s work, with the concomitant challenge of working within the framework of women’s bodies. Women’s work e.g building a city, sometimes involves additional tiers of negotiation beyond ‘tasks at hand’; pregnancy, childcare, monthly cycle, domestic care, heritage care, and land care, to name a few. That this additional tier of negotiation occurred at the Centenary Celebration added to the reflection upon the spontaneity and determination that women of the colony must have had to reckon with throughout their years in the desert, and elsewhere. For 4 hours, the artist moved rocks, dirt, sand, and dug a hole, as might have been done for the building of a foundation for a house, a wall, a well, at the site. Some of the implements used were shovels, sieves, pans, spoons and ladles.
