Community of Care

WHAT: 4k video, 20-minute animation, 4k, 50 inch wall mounted monitor, media player, stereo audio.

Grassland Community of Care/(More Than Human Persons) seeks to bring native plants to the forefront of our collective imaginations: advocating for a radically increased awareness of their lives, and questioning how our own lives and societies must now re-learn how to intersect and engage with theirs.
 
Human ‘communities of care’ are formed voluntarily; inspired by shared interests, passions or concerns, and developed through interpersonal advocacy and encouragement. Members work together with a sense of common purpose and spirit of altruism, engaging empathetic listening and engaged learning. Together they create shared understandings that transcend their differences and imagine and enact direct and indirect supporting actions. Slowly they find places and ways to better engage and cooperate, accelerated by the inexplicable joy and delight of being in the company of ..(wild grasses).

Grassland Community of Care/(More Than Human Persons) instead asks, what might a ‘community of care’ look like for Australia’s endangered native grasses and grasslands, if we reconsidered them as being central to life? It approaches this speculative investigation through abstract, ultra-close observations of these enigmatic flowering plants, both living and preserved –  intimating the presence, power, activity and agency of these ‘non-human persons’ that so profoundly shape our own practices of living, being and doing.

And along the way a community makes their passion and actions known to others - who are then encouraged to join their loose alliance, forever changing outlooks and attitudes on the place and importance of .. (Australia’s native grasses). 

‘Grassland Community of Care/(More Than Human Persons)’ was inspired by the goodwill and interpersonal engagement that underpinned the Carbon_Dating (carbondating.art)art project – a long-term interdisciplinary project that sought to develop a ‘community of care for grasses and grasslands’, incubated through the warmth, depth and energetic drives of the project’s artist/carer team who each spent time growing, nurturing and learning from Australia’s native grasses.

This artwork was inspired by, and included in the touring exhibition for the larger project Carbon_Dating: a complex interdisciplinary project 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 that 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. Community of Care was included in that exhibition.

WHERE:

• 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

FIRST NATIONS CONSULTANTS/COLLABORATORS: Uncle Bennett (Kuku Yalanji), Cairns Qld, Robin Derksen (Kamilaroi), Miles, Qld, Jo-Anne Driesens (Koa (Guwa), Kuku Yalangi, Yimithirr), Northen Rivers (NSW) & 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)

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.