Floating Land Archive Site 2021
Recomposed as a watery amphitheatre, Lake Weyba becomes both protagonist and platform for a series of performative exchanges, where interior and exterior landscapes merge. In this fluid setting, artists Katie Harris-MacLeod and Bianca Tainsh converge inner explorations with Weyba phenomena, abstracting the edges between reality, myth and time, and surfacing as a manifest through art film.
In this multi-layered project the artists subtly respond to Weyba’s natural and cultural timescape by creating a poetic dialogue through seven performances of ritual and score. At the same time experimental, playful and spiritual, the artists explore the relationship of human body and water body, by transcending into the material and spiritual landscape. Transition, feminine response and a connection to nature are influential themes, but Weyba will have final say, directing the mood through the elements – light, wind, rain.
A Topography of Reflection also comprises a digital component which can be accessed at www.topographyforreflection.wordpress.com
Shifting between media and contemporary methods, artist Bianca Tainsh’s experiential works are embedded in heterogeneous research and existential exploration. Archives of self-generated and cyber-sourced material, saturated with semiotic rhetoric become the provenance for video, digital media, assemblages, and live art, engendering a reflection on contemporary dilemmas.
Through theoretical frameworks and narrative, audiences are invited to engage deeply with issues such as climate change, mass consumerism, and the search for autonomy and spirituality in the digital age. And, as an escape from social expectations and consumerist shaping, a reconnection with nature and humanity is often facilitated through ritual and visualisation. By generating intimate moments of connection with her audience, Tainsh’s projects endeavour to reverberate outside of the gallery and realise actual social transformation.
Tainsh is this year’s winner of the New Media Prize in the Queensland Regional Art Awards, including a residency with the Queensland State Library. She was also the first resident artist selected for Punctum and Horizon Festival’s Seedpod Pilot and over the last ten years has exhibited in solo and group shows in Australia and overseas. She has participated in international residency programs and has been the recipient of an ArtStart grant. As an advocate of Art for Change, Tainsh has been invited to present a TEDx talk, webinars and as a panellist for symposiums.
Katie Harris-MacLeod is a multidisciplinary Scottish Australian contemporary artist. Katie’s work is deeply connected to nature, the psychogeography of place, Ecofeminist thought and the symbiotic exchanges experienced throughout the life cycle. Nuances of folklore, multiple generational narratives, femininity, loss and isolation are all present within her work. These narratives are then recorded through a poetic exchange between the artist, landscape, performance and practice of the wild.
Katie is a graduate of Duncan of Jordonstone College of Art & Design, Dundee, Scotland. Since graduating, Katie has lived and worked across the Hebrides of Scotland and the rural Highlands of Argyll. She has undergone a wide variety of international study tours and residencies across Scotland, Ireland, France and most recently, the ecologically diverse landscape of the Sunshine Coast.
In November 2020, Katie underwent an Arts and Ecology residency at the Maroochy Bushland Botanic Gardens, granted by the Sunshine Coast Council. During this residency, Katie was awarded a mentorship with artist, Jude Anderson, as part of the ‘Seed-Pod’ program with Punctum Inc. During this residency, Katie delved deeply into a study of the interwoven connectivities between bodies of trees and human beings/ bodies, becoming an on-going project named, Sap Works.
@bianca.tainsh
@katieharrismacleod
@topographyforreflection
