|
Sunday, 01 October 2006 06:00 |
|
The Ethos Foundation's 2006 Courageous Conversation "Waging Peace: Relationship, Ownership, the Earth, Community" in late August marked the start of a collaborative pilot project between regional visual artists and leading scientists called "Science and Art: Time of Transition".
During the week-long program, the artists considered questions such as the role of science in today's society, the creative processes of framing research questions and interpreting data, and the contrast between the natural patterns observed in nature and the more ordered and simplified patterns that humans create to run their communities.
The Courageous Conversation program allowed time for us to reflect on the day's presentations and explore ways of expressing social and environmental imperatives through a wide range of media. These include painting, photography, mixed media prints, recycled plastics, sculpture and even fire.
Some exciting and compelling themes also emerged, ranging from population to transcendence and religion to chaos theory.
The artists have now returned to their respective studios to further develop their ideas. The scientists we met during "Waging Peace" have agreed to keep in touch and further dialogues with them are anticipated in the coming months. A number of other scientists including Dr John Williams (Wentworth Group of Scientists), Dr Hugh Possingham (The Ecology Centre, University of Queensland) and Dr Stephan Harding (Schumacher College) will join the project shortly.
The artists will provide detailed proposals for works inspired during "Waging Peace" to the Gold Coast City Art Gallery by the end of the year. If accepted, Curator Brett Adlington will oversee an exhibition of these works for the gallery's 2008 program.
It is hoped that this body of work will allow challenging issues to be presented to a wide cross section of society in ways far more accessible than scientific reports.
If the concept is successful, it will show the value of art as a communication tool and hopefully lead to more opportunities for artists to contribute to 'knowledge exchange' programs.
|
