Webinars, seminars and events

Artist-in-residence donna davis has been working at the Queensland Herbarium alongside Dr Melinda Laidlaw, an ecologist focused on the study of pattern and change in Australian ecosystems, and Dr Melody Fabillo, botanist and microscopy specialist, to explore this very question. Using the vast herbarium collection and the state-of-the-art microscopy equipment at QHBS, together they have been exploring new and curious microscopic worlds; coupling rigorous botanical research with creative experimentation to inspire artworks that may engender new and transformative human-plant relationship paradigms.

Climate change poses a threat to all life forms. Ultimately this project seeks to explore the notion of interconnected well-being between plants and humans with respect to a changing climate and how we can understand, empathise and nurture this complex relationship in the age of climate stress.

This lunchtime talk provides a glimpse into the process that sits between science and art; showcasing how specimens and microscopy have inspired new artworks, including video, photography and soft sculpture.

Artist Bio:

donna davis’ work tells stories that examine ecological systems through a creative lens; exploring imagined futures and constructing new ways of seeing complex natural systems and our role within them. She is a multi-disciplinary artist who plays between science fact and science fiction, and is often embedded within long-term, deeply engaged ecological research projects to inspire her practice.

Process and cross disciplinary collaborations are key to her work, with her work grounded in science however resolved in speculative ways to contemplate the existential threat of climate change which threatens all life forms.  As an artist intrigued with the idea of human and non-human relationships, her work adopts a multi-species perspective to explore ideas around adaptation and genetic modifications and what this may mean in the broader context of survival for all living organisms. Working across a variety of media including new media, digital collage and installation she creates other worlds, hybrid creatures and speculative symbiotic multi-species rearrangements that explore the idea of agency, manipulation, adaptation and mutation to invite viewers to contemplate relationships with the more than-human world, and the future implications of our actions.