ARDC Research Data Australia
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Everything and Nothing
No full textEverything and Nothing was commissioned by the Museum of Brisbane for their exhibition New Woman, which featured work from ‘female’ artists living/working in Brisbane over the last 100 years. Whilst not identifying as female at the time of invitation, it seemed important to contribute to the dialogue of what gender has meant over the course of history until today.<p></p>
Looking Out
No full textCourtney Coombs has spent the year as Metro Arts’ 2016 Artist in Residence unlearning. Adopting Irigaray’s ‘The Ethical Gesture towards the Other’ as gospel, they have been looking out, looking in and conversing wherever possible to better understand their position in this world and the connections/disconnections that occur as a result. Looking Out presents a small selection of the outcomes of this lifelong pursuit.<p></p>
Penelope and the Seahorse
No full text<p dir="ltr">Research Background </p><p dir="ltr">This research investigates the hippocampus as a conceptual node connecting marine biology, classical mythology, neuroscience, and ecological crisis through immersive installation at the Chau Chak Wing Museum. The project explores how the multivalent meanings of hippocampus—seahorse genus, mythological creature, and brain structure governing memory and imagination—can generate layered networks of association that mirror the organ's own function of flexible memory reconstruction. By combining the museum's antiquities collection (Roman pottery, funerary urns) with handmade bronze seahorses and contemporary Starbucks cups, the research establishes a methodology for collapsing temporal boundaries between ancient and present material culture. This juxtaposition traces the passage of mermaid and siren symbols across time, demonstrating continuity in human fascination with aquatic hybridity from classical mythology to contemporary corporate iconography. The work responds to neuroscientific understanding of how the hippocampus enables imaginative projection by creating an installation environment that operates through similar principles of recombination, where archaeological artifacts, biological specimens, and consumer objects coalesce into what the artist terms a "futuristic vision of marine life as ghostly apparition." </p><p dir="ltr">Research Significance </p><p dir="ltr">This project makes significant contributions to understanding how contemporary installation art can activate interdisciplinary knowledge systems—spanning biology, mythology, neuroscience, and environmental studies—to create embodied experiences of cognitive and ecological interconnection. The significance lies in demonstrating how artistic practice can function as a form of flexible memory association itself, operating like the hippocampal network to recombine disparate temporal scales (deep pagan past, modernity, future scenarios) and knowledge domains into unified experiential fields. By foregrounding the seahorse's threatened status alongside its mythological and neurological resonances, the research addresses how installation art can hold multiple crisis narratives—habitat degradation, overfishing, cognitive fragility—within poetic rather than didactic frameworks. This work advances understanding of how aquatic-themed environments can function as sites for imagining alternative futures while acknowledging ecological loss. </p><p dir="ltr">Research Contribution </p><p dir="ltr">The research establishes new approaches to installation practice that employ scientific nomenclature and neurological processes as generative structures rather than illustrative content. Through the strategic deployment of the hippocampus as organizing principle—simultaneously subject, metaphor, and method—the project contributes knowledge about how exhibitions can enact the cognitive processes they reference, creating environments where viewers experience flexible memory reconstruction and imaginative recombination. By placing Roman funerary urns alongside handmade bronze seahorses and mass-produced Starbucks cups bearing mermaid logos, the work advances understanding of how material juxtaposition can reveal the persistence of aquatic mythological symbols across millennia—from ancient siren imagery to contemporary consumer culture. This archaeological-to-contemporary assemblage method demonstrates how museums' historical collections can be activated through contemporary artistic intervention to expose continuities in symbolic systems. The research contributes knowledge about how installation can operate across deep time, weaving together extinction narratives, ancient cosmologies, and futuristic visions while revealing the ongoing cultural transmission of marine hybridity myths, ultimately demonstrating art's capacity to hold ecological grief, scientific wonder, archaeological evidence, and mythological thinking in productive tension within immersive spatial environments.</p>
Ice Drops Pendants
No full text<p dir="ltr">Background: This research is situated in the field of material experimentation, vitreous enamelling, contemporary jewellery and the environment. This enquiry has been inspired by observing nature and science and has led to the development of a new and innovative enamel application that connects contemporary photo transfer processes with historical techniques used in symbolic precious objects including granulation and plique á jour. Museums and art galleries include jewellery objects that illustrate technical mastery in advanced manufacturing techniques from antiquity till today. Jewellery that explores plique á jour as a technique that is known as time consuming and scarcely made in this rapid world of AI and 3d Printing. Scientists, theorists and anthropologists including Anna Ploszajski, Glen Adamson and Tim Ingold have written about the understandings of material and process that artists and makers gain through time and experience. </p><p dir="ltr">Contribution: Ice drops connects the symbolic form of jewellery and the preciousness of plique á jour and granulation with the methodical scientific process of studying ice cores for important data to understand our climate history and future. Plique á jour translates to “letting in daylight” and it is referred to as early as 600 AD, with existing examples dating from as 1400 AD. The delicate technique uses an open metal framework of cells for inlaying and firing grains of transparent enamel at approx. 800°C. Granulation dates back even earlier at 5000 years and involves tiny metal granules fused to a base of sheet metal creating detailed patterns and arrangements. Ice drops is informed by Antarctic environments and ice core processing that analyses precious singular droplets melted from ice cores. This research uses glass distillation spheres to symbolise the individual droplets of water collected from the continuous melting process. The transparent spheres are positioned on an enamelled image of a glacier in a regular grid pattern and this highlights the preciousness of this scientific testing. The spheres are then fused into the image and this method makes reference to historically treasured artefacts of metal granulation and enamel plique á jour. </p><p dir="ltr">Significance: The work has been exhibited in Brussels, Belgium and later at Craft Victoria in Melbourne Australia. The research was first presented in Particles during the Brussels Jewellery Week in the curated exhibition PARTICLE[S] at MAD Brussels, An incubator and meeting point for the Brussels fashion & design industry with scenography by Marie Douel. The exhibition project and publication was curated by Les Brucelles with a panel of expert jurors for the exhibition included Eveline Bracke, Curator at Design Museum Gent, David Huycke, Teacher at PXL-MAD school of Arts Hasselt, Chequita Nahar, Head of Fine Art and Design program at the Maastricht Institute of Arts, Dilphine Perrache, Jewellery artist, Patrick Sigal Expert of the contemporary jewellery department at Pierre Bergé Auction. From the 96 works on show Ice Drops received an award ‘The Budapest Jewelry Award - which aims to reward the innovation concerning the concept and the implementation, as well as the technical excellence of artworks. The winner artist’s works perfectly meet these criteria. Her works communicate human experiences and connections with the environment using the special technique of phototransfer and involving site and archival studies.’</p>
Ice Draw
No full text<p dir="ltr">Background: This research is situated in the field of metalsmithing and enamelling and this artwork has been developed to question how decorative art objects can focus on highlight the preciousness of environment and the future of climate change. The draw has been used in contemporary art to highlight and represent the concept of the archive and history. Philosophers such as Gaston Bachelard and Maurice Mearleau-Ponty allow us to consider that a drawer is both symbolic and embodied and that the draw represents more than its physical function but that it is a space for embodied discovery and narrative. </p><p dir="ltr">Contribution: Following on from her doctoral study that had explored micromosaic jewellery forms Haydon looked at the Micromosaic objects in the Gilbert Collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum during the Australia Council for the arts studio residency in London in 2015. The objects in the collection where not only small jewellery pieces but there where examples of micromosaic tables and furniture. “Ice Draw” responds to these objects created for the Grand Tour by depict a pristine ice landscapes and glacier and the concept of archive and preservation. The work is constructed from microwelded and layered perforated heat blackened steel containers. Each container has been methodically etched with small hand drawn crosses, marking time and measurement. The drawer fronts are enamelled with an image of the Barne Glacier under a layer of glass microspheres referencing the micromosaic objects of the Grand Tour. Heike Zech, the former curator of the Rosalinde and Authur Gilbert Collection at the Victoria & Albert Museum included the following description of Haydon’s research, “Her Micromosaics reference the size and shape of the Italian Grand Tour plaques devised by Raffaelli’s generation but take us to an entirely different world - using photographs taken during a fellowship she prints enamels onto which she fuses dots of colourless glass. The effect is a delicate surface that evokes both the grid off the early micromosaic backgrounds and the miraculous form of snow crystals. Her work allows the viewer to cradle and mirage-like vision of Antarctica, a tangible reminder of the fragility of its ecosystem. Micromosaics are by no means an artform locked in the past. Both their materiality and the themes they address continue to evolve as expressions of the world”. Heike Zech, Highlights from the Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Collection, V&A Publishing London, 2019 </p><p dir="ltr">Significance: Established in 2022 as the inaugural Robert Foster F!NK national metal prize. This new prize and exhibition is the only exhibition in Australia to exhibit predominately silversmithing. Craft ACT brings together silversmiths and metal artists currently working around Australia. The award presents outstanding work in the field of contemporary metal working by designers and craftspeople - both established and emerging. In recognition of the value of high-quality craft making skills, good design and innovation. Ice Draw is one of 10 works selected and the exhibition took place as part of the DESIGN Canberra festival. The works were selected by a jury including Brian Parkes, Chief Executive Officer, Jam Factory Adelaide, Ewan McEoin, Senior Curator of Contemporary Design and Architecture at National Gallery of Victoria, Rohan Nicol, Associate Head of School, Creative Arts and Media, Associate Professor of Fine Art, University of Tasmania and Gretel Harrison, Director F!NK + Co.</p>
The only way out is through
No full text<p dir="ltr">Background </p><p dir="ltr">The only way out is through (2024) is positioned within contemporary material and process-based art practices that critically engage with embodiment, transformation, and the tensions between natural and constructed environments. Drawing on discourse from material culture studies, craft theory, and emergent technologies in art, the exhibition contributes to ongoing explorations of how handcrafted and digitally mediated processes intersect to express complex notions of uncertainty and resilience. Influenced by scholars and practitioners investigating the agency of materials and the reconfiguration of natural imagery, the work addresses gaps in articulating nature as both inherently organic and culturally constructed through artistic materiality. </p><p dir="ltr">Contribution </p><p dir="ltr">Produced solely by the artist’s hand, The only way out is through presents a multifaceted practice integrating sand-cast aluminium letters derived from digitally designed handwriting fonts, 3D printed and cast by the artist; cast glass forms; tapestry and digital hand weaving; and curated photographic image collections spanning years of observation. These diverse media and techniques converge to form intimate collections that explore nature’s dual status as natural and constructed. The exhibition’s research-driven processes foreground the interplay between traditional craft, digital fabrication, and photographic reimagining, expanding knowledge on the material negotiation of conceptual themes through tactility and process. This body of work advances understanding of how handmade and technological practices can collaboratively navigate shifting landscapes of meaning and experience. </p><p dir="ltr">Significance </p><p dir="ltr">Supported by the highly competitive 2023 Queensland Arts Showcase Program (QASP) from Arts Queensland, The only way out is through embodies a rigorous practice-led research methodology that situates contemporary craft and digital fabrication within critical environmental and material discourses. The artist’s sole authorship and diverse media use demonstrate technical proficiency and conceptual coherence, reinforcing the significance of integrated material approaches in contemporary art. The exhibition contributes to debates on the intersection of natural and constructed representations of environment, offering nuanced insights relevant to scholars and practitioners in material culture, environmental art, and craft studies. Its 2024 presentation advances conversations about resilience, transformation, and the negotiation of uncertainty through embodied, multisensory artistic processes.</p>
counter-sites
No full textGroup show curated by Karl Halliday and Madeleine Sherburn that brings together the work of seven artists whose practices dismantle, dissect and disrupt the complex connection between photography and place, image and site. Looking inwards to the properties of the medium itself, and outwards to the politics of vision, the exhibition extends and confuses the traditional-spatial experience of image through critical, archival and expanded approaches to photography.<p></p>
Displaced
No full text<p dir="ltr">Research Background</p><p dir="ltr">This work contributes to ongoing investigations into how photography can re-represent people and place within herder Mongolian society. It engages with the complexity of colonial history and stereotypes perpetuated by colonialist photographers throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The research challenges these reductive depictions and interrogates how popular culture continues to circulate tropes of exoticism around herder Mongolians. The practice-led objective is to re-interpret these tropes to more accurately reflect contemporary narratives of herder Mongolian identity, place, and history. </p><p dir="ltr">Research Contribution </p><p dir="ltr">Displaced interrogates past representations of Mongolian herder society produced by foreign photographers, including my own earlier project A Wandering Life – Journey with Nomads (2001). Through a process of self-reflective recontextualisation, new works were created that question the authority of earlier images and their role in shaping cultural understanding. The exhibition positions the photograph as never fixed, but as a representation that shifts across histories of photographic practice, cultural context, and the gaze of the viewer. In doing so, the work advances debates in photography around subjectivity, authorship, and the instability of documentary truth. </p><p dir="ltr">Research Significance </p><p dir="ltr">Displaced was selected as one of three featured international exhibitions at the 2024 Ulaanbaatar Photo Week Photography Festival. The project was accompanied by public talks, media coverage, and university presentations, contributing to dialogue across local and international audiences. Now in its third year, the festival is recognised as a key platform for contemporary photographic practice in Mongolia, featuring both local and international artists including Asher Svidensky (Israel), Tetsuro Shimizu (Japan) and myself. International submissions are peer-reviewed and curated, underscoring the critical recognition of Displaced as a significant contribution to contemporary practice-led photographic research.</p>
First in Family (after Munari)
No full text<p dir="ltr"><b>Background </b>This photographic series comprises 14 prints that reimagine Bruno Munari's 1944 work "Seeking Comfort in an Uncomfortable Chair." Munari's original series critiqued the tension between aesthetics and functionality in furniture design, using the metaphor of coming home tired to find an uncomfortable chair. Transforming this metaphor into a commentary on first-generation university students' educational experiences, Bolatagici draws upon lived experience to examine how students—particularly those from Black, Indigenous, and racialised backgrounds—navigate institutional systems not designed to accommodate their needs or epistemologies, constantly seeking comfort within fundamentally inhospitable spaces where their embodied knowledge is systematically devalued within a western institutional framework. <br><br><b>Research Significance</b> Bolatagici's work makes visible the often-invisible labour and discomfort experienced by first-generation students from racialised backgrounds navigating higher education. By problematising resilience narratives, she shifts focus from individual adaptation to institutional responsibility, asking not "how can students better fit the system?" but "how must the system change to genuinely support diverse ways of knowing and being?" Originally conceived as part of the Black Tourmaline Project (2019), presented by The Community Reading Room at Testing Grounds, Melbourne, the work was supported by Creative Victoria and the Carstairs Prize (2018). The series was subsequently presented in the 2025 exhibition 'de-centre re-centre' at the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, University of Western Australia. <br><br><b>Research Contribution</b> This work sits within Bolatagici's larger practice exploring transcultural notions of value and the movement of racialised bodies. Through The Community Reading Room (founded 2013), Bolatagici has developed an ongoing discursive project generating discussion about archives, value, and how institutions privilege particular epistemologies, directly confronting educational inequity through collaborative, participatory practice.</p>
Eagle Point Foreshore Hub
No full text<p dir="ltr">Background: This creative work contributes to research on the role of small-scale civic buildings in regional Australian towns, particularly how architectural design can support community services where resources are limited. Recent work by practices such as Workshop Architecture, Antarctica Architects and NMBW demonstrates ongoing interest in modest public buildings that consolidate multiple functions and reinforce local identity through familiar forms. The Eagle Point Foreshore Hub builds on this context by examining how a single project can integrate community, recreational and commercial activities while responding to the spatial and environmental circumstances of a township that has long lacked coordinated public infrastructure. The work forms part of a broader inquiry into how design-led approaches can strengthen everyday civic life in regional settings. </p><p dir="ltr">Contribution: The project demonstrates how diverse programmatic requirements in a small regional community can be organised within a compact and coherent architectural arrangement. By colocating a community hall, public amenities, caravan park reception and retail elements, café and recreational facilities, the work shows how spatial efficiencies and shared interfaces can reduce overall footprint while improving public access to essential services. A taxonomy of local buildings established the prevailing scale and roof forms of the context. Dividing the building into two smaller volumes linked by a central public deck aligns the project with local massing patterns, while the use of recognisable gabled forms contributes to research on how vernacular references support community engagement and ease of use. The work offers insight into how architectural planning and material organisation can enable regional facilities to operate effectively with modest means. </p><p dir="ltr">Significance: The project was commissioned through a competitive public tender process. It was shortlisted for the 2025 Australian Institute of Architects (AIA) Victorian Chapter Awards in the Public Architecture and Regional Architecture categories, exhibited at Monash University and Deakin University, and published through ArchitectureAU as part of the awards program.</p><p dir="ltr"><br></p>