Carbon_Dating

WHAT: ALSO SEE:  www.carbondating.art (Project specific website)
Stage 1 of Carbon_Dating was initiated in 2022 as a series of networked, experimental artworks situated throughout Queensland, that sought to shift attitudes towards the diverse Australian native grasses that grow in those regions. The outcomes of the project (Stage 2) were then curated into a touring exhibition by Beth Jackson and Jo-Anne Driessens, and presented both in Beijing, China and throughout the Queensland regions during 2023-5.

Stage 1 of the project was enacted over a 5-month period in 5 Queensland locations (Cairns, Miles, Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast and Somerset). Each site involved the establishment and care of a local iconic native grass planting/artwork comprised of two species, with species tailored to that local bioregion (Oct-2022-Feb 2023). At each site we engaged with local community members and consulted with First Nations experts. Each location also had a principal carer/artist or team who received both a grass garden kit and an artwork called the ‘Interweaver’. The Interweaver’s functions were to: present ongoing images from the projects' remote grass garden (which contained the project's chosen 6 species) located in Samford, Qld and to provide inspirational prompts to the carers about their emerging experiences growing native grasses. These were delivered on printed cards prepared by the project's 'Grassland Community of Care Coordinator', in order to encourage a relationship building process between the carer(s) and their grasses. All sites of this distributed artwork were made visible to online audiences at www.carbondating.art. Through these processes a Queensland-wide Grassland community of care interest group was  developed - which also came together to share resources at HOTA, Gold Coast in December 2022 for a First Nations led Yarning Circle.

Stage 2: Involves a tour comprised of 8 gallery exhibitions (2024-5) both in Australia and China that reflect upon the processes and the art, science and culture of human-native grass relationships and presented commissioned works from each of the artist/carers.

WHO:
Collaborators have included:
donna davis: Co-Director, Co-producer, Lead Artist (blog link)
Andrea Higgins: Regional Development and Marketing, Artist
Beth Jackson: Curator
Jo-Anne Driessens: Curator
Daniele Constance: Socially Engaged Artist
Tania Leimbach: Institute for Sustainable Futures/Eco-critical writer
Luke Lickfold: Sound Artist

WHERE:
6th Art and Science International Exhibition, 
National Communication Centre for Science and Technology, Beijing, China.
Dec 30th, 2023 – Mar 31st, 2024 (COMPLETED)
 
Dogwood Crossing Gallery, Miles, QLD  
23 March – 11 May 2024
 
Warwick Art Gallery, Warwick, QLD 
13 June – 13 July 2024
 
Redland Art Gallery, Cleveland, QLD 
11 August – 29 September 2024
 
Caloundra Regional Gallery, Caloundra, QLD   
18 Oct – 8 December 2024
 
Tablelands Regional Gallery, Atherton, QLD
17 January – 25 February 2025

Qantas Founders Museum, Longreach, QLD 
15 March – 15 June 2025
 
Bundaberg Regional Art Gallery, Bundaberg, QLD 
18 July – 7 September 2025

INTERWEAVER CARERS/ARTISTS: Merinda Davies (Gold Coast, Qld), Delissa Walker (Kuku Yalanji) (Cairns, Qld), Sharron Colley + Hilary Coulter (Miles, Qld), Liz Capelin, Bianca Bond, Melissa Stannard, Kilagi Nielsen and Mia Hacker, in consultation with traditional owner Uncle Brian Warner (Sunshine Coast), Pipier Weller + Jason Murphy (Jinibara) (Somerset, Qld).

FIRST NATIONS CONSULTANTS/COLLABORATORS: Uncle Bennett (Kuku Yalanji), Cairns Qld, Robin Derksen (Kamilaroi), Miles Qld, Jo-Anne Driesens (Koa (Guwa), Kuku Yalangi, Yimithirr), Gold Coast, Qld & Melissa Stannard (Yuwaalaraay, Gamilaraay and Koama), Uncle Brian Warner (Kabi Kabi) and Kilagi Nielsen (Papua New Guinea) Sunshine Coast, Qld.

SCIENCE CONSULTANTS: 
Prof. Jennifer Firn (Ecological Science/Plant Biology)
Prof. Peter Grace (Ecological Science/Soil Sciences)

PARTNERS:
Northsite Contemporary Arts, Cairns (Director Ashleigh Campbell), Dogwood Crossing Gallery, Miles (Director Anne Keam) + DC Gallery Committee, Dulacca State School, Miles (Principal Kylie Parnaby), HOTA Gold Coast (Engagement Curator Sam Creyton) with thanks to Sarah Lewis, The Condensery, Toogooloowah (Director Rachael Arndt), Caloundra Regional Gallery (Director Jo Duke), Third Nature (Liz Capelin Director), QUT - (SERF (Samford Environmental Research Facility), Centre For the Environment, Office of e-Research, Research Infrastructure, More Than Human Futures Group & CIESJ Faculty, School of Creative Arts, Brisbane). Native Seeds Pty Ltd nativeseeds.com.au have supplied and advised us re: native grass seed and plantings. Tel: 1300 473 337 E: enquiries(at)nativeseeds.com.au. ReBul packaging have assisted us with cutting of cardboard garden beds

FUNDING:
The 2024-5 Carbon_Dating exhibition tour is supported by the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland, assisted by QUT School of Creative Practice, International Art Services (IAS), Native Seeds Pty Ltd, Artfully, and Embodied Media.

Between 2019-23 this project was assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body. It was also supported by the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland, Regional Arts Development Fund (RADF). The Regional Arts Development Fund is a partnership between the Queensland Government: Cairns Regional Council; Western Downs Regional Council; City of Gold Coast Council; Somerset Regional Council; and ArtsCoast as part of Sunshine Coast Council’s RADF program to support local arts and culture in regional Queensland. 

Thanks also to QUT (School of Creative Practice, QUT Office of eResearch and Samford Ecological Research Facility). NorthSite Contemporary Arts, Cairns; Dogwood Crossing Gallery, Miles; HOTA, Gold Coast; The Condensery, Toogooloowah; Caloundra Regional Gallery, Caloundra; Native Seeds Pty Ltd and ReBul Packaging.

FURTHER CONTEXT:
We chose to focus on Australian indigenous grasses because - as plants, and then ‘minor ones’ at that for many of us - we typically disregard them, or consider them uninteresting, weedy or dull; forgetting how dependent we are upon them for our wellbeing: in fact they are a supercritical part of a system that powers animal feeding, provides the wheat and oats (grasses) we eat daily and produces a great proportion of the air we breathe. Like this copious amounts of oxygen they give us in return for our exhaled carbon dioxide, grasses remain invisible to most of us. We also find them hard to differentiate - therefore remaining mostly oblivious  to their perilous state. The Australian State of Victoria now has less than 1% of its flowering grassland ecosystems intact. This loss of grasslands is attributable to all forms of development including widespread conversion to imported pasture grasses and cereal (i.e. imported grasses) - crops which then rapidly escaped the farm gate. Furthermore native grasses disappeared under heavy grazing from hard-hoofed animals that compacted once friable soils. The widespread use of superphosphate fertiliser also created conditions unfavourable to native grasses that typically throve in poor and aged soils. And so - as with so many other species, these richly biodiverse communities have been quietly colonised out of existence in most Australian states.

Recent scientific research has  shown that plants express equivalences of memory, sentience and learning. However talking them up on the basis that they may be ‘more like us’ won’t necessarily lead to us respecting them on their own terms. Could we ever envisage plants, like grasses as more than objects for human use?  Is there a different way to think of grasses - as something much more than mere objects for our use, pleasure or gain? Could they even be thought of as having their own ‘self-hood’, or capacity to act or intervene on their own terms? Its worth noting that such concepts are common within numerous traditional societies.  Carbon_Dating therefore sets out to ask, through an experimental art-science process and in consultations with Australian First Nations practitioners, artists and experts, how might we be able to build a new form of respect and care for the ‘more than human’, world of native grasses.

EXTENDED CREATIVE RATIONALE:
Science and ‘plant neurobiology’ now tell us that plants, and thus grasses, appear to possess their own unique versions of what we term ‘consciousness’, ‘intelligence’, ‘memory’ and ‘awareness’. These findings challenge our deep-seated anthropocentric, romanticised associations around plants, calling for a new ecological empathy, kinship and solidarity with them. This resonates with the ‘vegetal being’ and ‘consciousness’ writings of philosophers Luce Irigaray, Michael Marder, Prudence Gibson and Giovanni Aloi from Critical Plant Studies, multi-species advocates such as  Donna Harraway and Anna Tsing, and the braided, entwined wisdoms imaged by Indigenous scientist/writers such as Wall-Kimmerer and Tyson Yunkaporta. 

Two Speeds of Grass
Grass: this most widely spread of the flowering plant families, seems to pop up almost everywhere, especially after rain - and yet many of us remain almost entirely  ‘blind’ to its lives - or even its names; regarding it as at best utilitarian, a visual background, a nuisance to be slashed, or just plain boring. In Australia, a small number of introduced grasses have been able to flourish at extraordinary levels, almost everywhere - particularly in pastures, as commercial crops, and as garden lawns, routinely smothering, or at best living very well in almost every type of bioregion. As one of the most deliberately redistributed and cultivated plants across the globe, their presence underpins our food security and amenity, regulates our climate and provides us with vast amounts of oxygen.  

The extraordinary success, dynamism and adaptability of grasses have allowed them to go on take root, albeit unintentionally, far and wide beyond the farm gate, causing profound changes in landscapes - and not surprisingly posing an huge array of critical conservation challenges. Correspondingly many native grasses have done it tough. With little or no protection against the cloven animals of the first settlers, those introduced herbivores, rapidly ate them out. Steadily replaced by fertilised pasture, and pushed out of creek lines, savannahs and forests, their profusion has now mostly gone, or approaches extinction in many regions. Many of us would no longer recognise a native grassland if we saw one, and if so might likely, incorrectly, bemoan its lack of trees. And so, whilst they might be hanging on in rare protected corners of the landscapes, like railway cuttings or country grave yards, without our interest or care going forward, the future of diverse grasslands in Australia (and the world) looks truly grim.