forage: symbiotic (trans)formations | curated by Nicole Wallace
Artists: Alyson Bell, Katherine Boland, Heather Burness, Katie Harris-MacLeod, Catriona Pollard, Rhonda Pryor, Jo Victoria and Liz Williamson.
13 September - 7 October 2023
This exhibition will be touring Australia as of early 2025. (Dates tbc)
In a period of concerning climate change, ‘forage: symbiotic (trans)formations’ explores, interprets, transforms and preserves nature’s ephemera and our relationships to it; inviting visitors to pursue deepened connections with their surroundings, environmental awareness and the veneration of our human-enviro symbiosis.
‘forage: symbiotic (trans)formations’ brings together eight east coast, metro and regional female Artists for whom foraging natural materials is at the core of their artistic practices. The Artists introduce fresh and original methods to conventional artistic mediums such as printmaking, painting, weaving, fibre art, textiles, film, digital AI, ceramics, and sculptural installation. They achieve this by integrating natural debris, saps, pigments, and the surrounding atmosphere.
In this series of artworks, MacLeod explores themes of family, ecological intimacy, sexuality, mortality, bodily memory, and the more-than-human. Each drawing is a layering of emotional responses to the complicated relationships she has to the above notions and to the places where they occurred. Both anthropic and organic materials have been foraged from specific locations throughout Scotland and Australia. These drawings embody an alchemical shift in MacLeod’s understanding of place and identity.