Under Story by Wills Project

Wills Project

Wills Projects are William Cheesman and Laura Wills. A collaborative art and design team based in Tarntanya Adelaide on Kaurna land. Together they have over 20 years of experience in the arts working across concept design, project management, lead artist, community work and fabrication. They have an interest in public projects and creating bespoke artworks and installations. Their contemporary practice regularly finds them collaborating with communities, other artists, architects and designers to develop large scale artworks for public space. They are often responding to setting and community which contributes to the development of their ideas and an understanding to communicate diversity, inclusion and a sense of place. Current projects include public art for Rural City of Murray Bridge, City of Onkaparinga and developing new sculpture for this years Heysen Sculpture Biennale at Carrick Hill.
https://www.willsprojects.net.au
https://www.instagram.com/wills.projects/

Moths underground.

No, not a new political movement but a quirky expression of earth’s biodiversity. A minute piece in the fantastic fractal web of life. Or just another dark day hidden away, if you’re a rain moth caterpillar that is.

Consider - you hatch from a small egg lying on a dry, fallen eucalyptus leaf. You chew things for a while then head underground to feast in darkness. The soil is damp and eucalypt roots taste good. So good that you remain eating them for a year, maybe more.

Sound isn’t important but is communication? Are secret musings exchanged with mycelia waiting to release fruiting bodies, scarab larvae feeding, or your host plant?

Eventually you mature and feel the beckoning of metamorphosis; you are to inhabit an entirely different body produced by the same chromosomes, the same genome, you were issued as an egg.

You are to fly.

You move up near the soil surface to change as summer gives way to autumn.

Then….humidity. Moisture. Rain!!

It’s time. You break the soil surface, emerging as an adult rain moth from the dark into the dark. Into the autumn night of light falling rain.

Many of your kind are emerging. You are female. Big; bigger than the males. You walk up a small trunk feeling your wings expand.

Haven’t got long. Wings good - take flight. A flowering eucalypt; the nectar sweet and sustaining. Your feeding pollinates the flowers returning the subterranean favour afforded you.

You, a rain moth, are similar to other moth species but of course there are differences. A few moths don’t feed, their mouthparts are reduced. You can’t feel the vibration of bat calls like a noctuid moth can. You’re not often attracted to light like some other moths, a habit that confuses humans who can’t figure out why. But I digress… There’s little time.

A brief encounter with a male congener, unblinded by the evolutionary spell of romance cast upon those same humans.

You take flight again seeding the ground with your eggs in a joyous frenzy.

Then, after alighting….a weariness. A deep weariness that is the portent of your final service. As for all living things, you slowly return to your origin. Consumed without malice by myriad other creatures. You are taken into the vortex of carbon and nitrogen cycling. Your final service.

Final?

One of your eggs lies upon a dry, fallen eucalyptus leaf...