SymbioticA

Deb Aldridge

Deb Aldridge

Deb Aldridge is a bio artist, who after years of maintaining long distance relationships, is inspired by human and interspecies connection. She is fascinated by bodies and their relationship with each other and their ecologies and how science, philosophy and poetics construct the way we relate to the world around us.

In 1999, she graduated with an honours degree in Art History and Curatorship (ANU) and an internship with the Curator of Australian Photography, National Gallery of Australia. Her corporate career focused on events and relationship management and ended with a move from the tax office to taxidermy. In 2021, a high point towards completing her Masters in Biological Art was a practicum placement in Research and Collections at the Western Australian Museum, learning specimen preparation.

Her Masters research project, Be Sad For Me, is an investigation into tears through histology, post human philosophy and the development of a semi living apparatus that can cry for us. It is positioned in both scientific and artistic practice by referencing scientific methodologies and artistic medium and expression. The semi living apparatus, comes to life through a collaboration with lichen and Peter Minson, a glass artist living and working in Binalong, New South Wales. It extends the mechanism of crying to a non-human semi living apparatus, in an attempt to free us humans from the constant invitation by worldwide news media to be sad, and simultaneously reconsiders the Anthropocentric, scientific viewpoint that emotional tears are unique to the human species.

Exhibitions

November 2021. Be Sad For Me: Masters exhibition, Edge Galleries, Maldon. Victoria

September 2019. Celebration: group exhibition of local artists autobiographical works, Fingers Crossed CafeĢ, Dalston, London, UK.

https://www.instagram.com/water_fromthesky/
https://debaldridge.wordpress.com