An exhibition showcasing native grasses and the human relationship with the environment opens at the Qantas Founders Museum in Longreach tomorrow (Saturday March 15) featuring the work of artists including QUT senior lecturer in visual art Dr Keith Armstrong who led the project.
Carbon_Dating has been touring the state courtesy of Arts Queensland funding in regional sites including Miles, Warwick, Redlands, Caloundra and Atherton (FNQ). A preview was also presented in Beijing at the sixth Art and Science International Exhibition, National Communication Centre for Science and Technology. The Longreach exhibition is the seventh official opening of the tour.
Described as a collaborative, environmental research project/exhibition, Dr Armstrong explains that Carbon_Dating originated as a series of networked, experimental artworks situated throughout Queensland - with the aim of shifting attitudes towards the diverse Australian native grasses that grow in those regions – Kangaroo, Queensland Blue, Scented Top, Black Spear, Barbed Wire and Curly Mitchell.
Local artists initially grew grasses supported by the project, and then later responded to that experience by developing the artworks that make up this exhibition.
Dr Armstrong’s video Grassland Community of Care/(More Than Human Persons) is featured in the exhibition and beautifully highlights the intricate details of the delicate structures of the grasses at a micro and macro scale. The film asks what a ‘community of care’ might look like for Australia’s endangered native grasses and grasslands, if we reconsidered them as being central to life.
Dr Armstrong has been Director of the entire project since 2019, a role that included building its website, creating documentaries for it and collaborating on writing outcomes with Dr. Tania Leimbach (UNSW), First Nations artist Delissa Walker Ngadijina and ethnobotanist Dr. Gerry Turpin. The project’s co-director is artist Donna Davis.
By drawing upon Indigenous cultural and scientific understandings and knowledges of grass and grasslands, and by incorporating sculpture, site-specific growing, networked technologies and artist-led provocations, the team behind the project developed a series of connected creative experiments and grass plantings spread across rural, regional and urban Australia that together form the work Carbon_Dating.
“Carbon_Dating began in 2022 as a series of artwork-based experiments, and a ‘campaign’, that aimed to shift our relationships with Poaceae – flowering members of the vegetal wild known as grasses,” Dr Armstrong said.
“By focusing upon an often-overlooked group of native plants, Carbon_Dating reminds us that restoring the health of our environment requires us to look beyond 'charismatic species' that so often steal our attention.
“Despite grasses being one of the most critical plants for the survival of life on earth, our understanding and appreciation of them (beyond their use as animal fodder or lawn-making) remains limited.
“Native grasses are nature’s superpower – life as we know it would not exist without them. By sponsoring the planting of small indigenous grassland areas and gardens, we seek to foster living sites for our art experiments; as we build a campaign built on partnership, respect and care.”
Carbon_Dating presents and shares knowledge and stories and incorporates a variety of contemporary art forms responding to Queensland Indigenous grasses. The artists present a broad range of mediums including sculpture, weaving, textiles, photography, new media, film and performance-related artworks.
The artists featured in the exhibition are Keith Armstrong, Liz Capelin, Daniele Constance, Hilary Coulter, Donna Davis, Merinda Davis, Mia Hacker, Andrea Higgins, Luke Lickford, Jason Murphy, Kilagi Nielsen, Sasha Parlett, Melissa Stannard, Delissa Walker Ngadijina and Pipier Weller. It is curated by Beth Jackson and Jo-Anne Driessens (Koa/Guwa).
Carbon_Dating will be on show at the Longreach Museum of Art at the Qantas Founders Museum from March 15 to June 15. It will then move to the Bundaberg Regional Art Gallery from July 18 to September 7.
Media contact:
Amanda Weaver
QUT Media
07 3138 2361 / 0407 585 901 (After Hours)
