ECOLOGIES OF SILENCE

Ecologies of Silence: An exploration of storied matter in colonial Australia was published by the Ian Potter Museum of Art in 2018 and bears the title of a lecture that accompanied the presentation of video work Palimpsest, produced for the Meigunyah Student Art Award in 2018.

Produced in collaboration with natural specimens contained in the Museum’s Meigunyah collection this project applied New Materialist framework perspectives to both the collection and the life of Russell Grimwade, seeing to reposition the natural specimens as heterogenous, diverse and agents, entangled in the erasure and violence in the colonial history of so-called Australia.

This project was the first of the new materialist archival work continued in Archive (2019) by Leisa Shelton and Place Unknown: A speculative Taxonomy (2021) commissioned by the Powerhouse Museum of Applied art and Science for the Eucalyptusdom exhibition.

You can read a summary of the Storied Matter lecture here,