JR’s Homily to Country, 2020, draws attention to the ecological decline of the Darling (Baaka) River, Australia’s third longest river, caused by intensive water extraction due to irrigation, climate change and drought. Stimulated by an interest in the plight of farmers globally and the tensions that often exist between Indigenous peoples, ‘family farms’ and multinational agribusinesses, JR’s work also focuses on the human impact of the river’s decline. Envisaged as an open-air chapel, Homily to Country draws on the materiality of JR’s recent projects – a simple scaffold structure with a printed façade – which houses five large-scale stained glass windows. Each of these windows features the artist’s photography from a 2020 research trip, and accompanying the installation is a film documenting JR’s field research. Two portraits depict orchardists who have been forced to remove and burn their families’ commercial orchards due to lack of irrigation flows, and the third depicts a senior Baakandji Elder and spokesperson for the Darling (Baaka) River. For the Baakandji, the health of the river is inextricably and directly related to the health of their culture. Not only does the river offer food, fibre and shelter, but also a central proposition around which to structure culture. In 2020 large sections of the river ran dry.