SymbioticA's curatorial history involves the practice of exhibiting living works in gallery settings- responding to the shifting perceptions of life.
3SDC: Sunlight, Soil & Shit (De)Cycle
Ionat Zurr, Oron Catts in collaboration with Steve Berrick
6th-26th February 2022
Opening: 5th Feb 6:30pm
PS
22-26 Pakenham Street
Fremantle/Walyalup, Australia
Sunlight, Soil & Shit (De)Cycle (3SDC) is a contestable food systems project about Agricultural Technology.
AgTech aims to automate and control food production, while non-standardised elements such as sunlight, soil and shit are removed in favour of artificial light, substrates and fertilisers.
Bringing the farm to the lab and the lab to the farm, this project considers whether the means of production will grow ever distant from Nature. Will this metabolic rift be the precursor to open and sustainable food systems?
In times of ecological crisis, there is a vital need for seriously playful artistic interventions into these fantasies of separating humans from Nature. By using aesthetics to intervene, sense and gain data about the different processes involved in food manufacturing we are allowing the public to consider their own relationship to food and technology.
This project has been funded by the Department of Local Government Sport & Cultural Industries (WA), The Seed Box (Linköping University Sweden) and assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.
Date: 1-10 October 2015
Location: John Curtin Gallery Perth Western Australia
Futile Labor is concerned with our changing perceptions of life and its agencies bound by the phenomenon of movement, as they are brought on by new biotechnologies. This exhibition by Ionat Zurr, Chris Salter and Oron Catts is a new major work informed by three years of DECRA research.
Date: 3 October - 5 December 2015
Location: Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, The University of Western Australia
Curated by Oron Catts, Elizabeth Stephens and Jennifer Johung.
Opened by Paola Antonelli 6:00pm 2 October 2015
One evening in October 1995, the BBC aired striking footage of a nude mouse with a human ear growing on its back. This evocative living object became one of the defining images of the late twentieth century, a symbol of our increasing capacity to shape and alter living bodies.
DeMonstrable reflected on the multifaceted cultural and scientific impact of the Earmouse. New work commissioned for this exhibition
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Cernentia: Exploring the Visual Perception of Lungfishes Without Eyes
Kidogo Art House, Fremantle Western Australia
24th-31st July 2015
In ‘Cernentia: exploring the visual perception of lungfishes without eyes’ (2015), the audience is invited to experience the visual world of a group of Australian lungfishes born without external eyes. By using scientific methodologies and artistic practice, Appudurai creates a kaleidoscopic interface built from scientific and artistic traces that poetically extends human perception beyond vision, and highlights the limitations that prevent us from complete embodiment.
Date: 8 June - 21 August 2013.
Location: Powerhouse Museum Sydney
Curated by: Oron Catts
semipermeable (+) looks at the membrane as a site, metaphor and platform for a series of artistic interventions and projects, some commissioned specifically for the show and others selected from the many projects developed at SymbioticA since 2000.
Luminous Night Print Retrospective
Location: UWA University Club
When: 8th Feb 2013
As part of UWA's Luminous Night centenary celebrations SymbioticA showcases work spanning the lifetime of the Centre, including new work from 2012, in print form.
Date: 6 May - 10 June 2012
Location: INQB8 Centre for Contemporary Art, 63 Ormsby Terrace, Mandurah Western Australia
Curated by: Cecelia Cmielewski
Exploring the microbe to the macro, and everything in-between, Adaptation is SymbioticA's art and ecology research project undertaken by artists at Lake Clifton since 2008. Lake Clifton as a location and as a metaphor, offers a microcosmic peak into the broader issues of ecology and life itself. Adaptation broadly scopes issues spanning the creation of life, indigenous culture, colonisation, scientific discovery, developmental booms, to fragility in the face of climate change. Outcomes of SymbioticA’s Adaptation residency and collaboration projects will be showcased in this exhibition.
Curated by: Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr
Produced by: Science Gallery, Dublin and SymbioticA
This exhibition will explore and provoke questions about scientific truths, what constitutes living and the ethical and artistic implications of life manipulation.
Curated by: Jens Hauser
Produced by: SymbioticA
From frogs that mutate naturally to the fallouts of bio-warfare and torture, seminal bio-art exhibition Still, Living showcased work dealing with biological systems, as part of the third Biennale of Electronic Arts Perth.
Curated by: Oron Catts
Produced by: SymbioticA
As the winners of the inaugural Hybrid Arts Golden Nica, SymbioticA's director Oron Catts was asked to curate a showcase exhibition to highlight the work developed in SymbioticA.
Curated by: Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr
From a pin-ball competition between humans and micro-organisms to the movements of rolling robotic fish bowls, the anti-aesthetic of breeding plants and fungi grown into textile stains, BioDifference explored Biological art with ideas concerning relationships with living systems and the interconnectivity of the different levels of life.
Curated by: Oron Catts
The art in BioFeel goes beyond the fantasy of the surrealist project. The artists are dealing with the actual wet palette of possibilities of life manipulation offered by biotechnology.