On 14 February, Kiama’s SEVENMARKS Gallery will present Rising Tide, a new exhibition by artist Alexander Boynes that features an unlikely subject as its focus - the Illawarra Steelworks.

Rising Tide brings together a major new body of paintings and drawings alongside a large-scale painting, a video projection, and an original score by cellist and composer Tristan Parr all about Port Kembla and its surroundings.

“At its core, the project is about Port Kembla and the Illawarra as places shaped by industry, ecology, labour, and deep time,” Boynes said.

Boynes was inspired by the way the steelworks embody a tension between beauty and destruction.

“I personally find them quite beautiful - there’s something mesmerising about industrial landscapes, even though they’re producing things that are harmful,” he said. 

“Art historically talks about the romantic sublime; maybe this is an industrial sublime. Beauty can exist in these spaces too.”

Beyond their imposing presence, the steelworks are deeply embedded in the social and cultural fabric of the region.

“The Illawarra is one of Australia’s most significant industrial landscapes. Port Kembla, in particular, has literally helped build modern Australia through steel,” Boynes said. 

“It has also been central to major cultural movements - migrant rights, women’s rights protests, labour struggles - and that history is important.”

At the same time, Boynes is clear-eyed about the environmental consequences of industry.

“This has always been Dharawal country. These landscapes were shaped over millennia by coastal systems, wetlands, escarpments, and cultural knowledge long before industry arrived. Industry has rapidly transformed those environments, and I want the work to begin from that deep history,” he said.

“That tension - prosperity and sacrifice existing side by side - is central to the work.”

SEVENMARKS describes Boynes’ work as presenting “fractured, atmospheric visions, where structures and figures hover between endurance and erasure, presence and collapse.”

The project is also deeply personal for Boynes. His mother, the late Australian artist Mandy Martin - renowned for creating the largest commissioned artwork in the Australian Parliament - worked extensively in and around Port Kembla during the 1980s.

“Port Kembla has a personal connection for me,” Boynes said. “My mother made a lot of work in that area when I was a kid. In that sense, this project is tied to my own history and her legacy. It helped shape the way I think about landscape, ethics, and responsibility.”

One of the works from Rising Tide. Photo: SEVENMARKS

While Rising Tide engages with major issues such as climate change and green energy, Boynes does not see art as offering direct solutions. Instead, he believes in its power to provoke reflection and emotional engagement.

“Art bears witness. It can reflect back to us what’s hidden in plain sight,” he said. “Its ability to make people feel operates very differently from statistics or reports. Humans are emotive beings, and when we feel something deeply, that’s often when we’re motivated to act.”

“This is one of the biggest challenges civilisation will face in our lifetimes, and every approach matters. Art just happens to be the language I have to engage with these issues - to ask questions, create pauses, and encourage people to reflect on their own impact.”

Boynes is careful to emphasise that the exhibition is not intended to instruct viewers on what to think.

“The exhibition is really about witnessing transformation and asking what responsibility looks like now,” he said. 

“In many ways, the show aims to be a monument to labour, but also a reminder of environmental cost. I’m not trying to be didactic - I’m talking about ethics and asking us to consider the systems that shape our lives.”

Rising Tide is a special multi-disciplinary exhibition, combining painting, drawing, moving image, and sound. 

“All these forms are communicating the same ideas, but at different rates of release and decay. Seeing how they work together, each in its own way, is really interesting to me.”

Rising Tide opens at SEVENMARKS Gallery on 14 February from 5–7pm and runs until 14 March. More information is available via the SEVENMARKS Gallery website.