Rather than boring, watching grass grow draws us into a community of care
Watching grass grow turns out to be quite a fascinating business and is key to protecting the environment, insects and animals – as a new exhibition touring Queensland reveals.
Watching grass grow gets a bad rap, considering how interesting grasses can actually be.
It’s a rare exhibition that draws people and native grasses into collaboration. Yet Carbon_Dating, the brainchild of artist and academic Keith Armstrong, has brought six species of grass within an artistic “community of care”.
The exhibition is now showing at the Tablelands Regional Gallery, Atherton, as part of a tour of Queensland. Armstrong’s aim was to team up “adventurous humans and vivacious grasses” to develop “radically new kinds of relationships with each other”.
The project and exhibition title, drawn from the scientific process for aging organic material, refers to the carbon that humans and plants share, and the relationship potential between particular grasses, artists and their places.
The artwork in the exhibition is the outcome of a three-month growing phase (September to December, 2023) which saw artists from all over Queensland cultivate endemic native grasses from a palette of six species. This phase was recorded and shared, with artworks then created based on that experience.
The results are in a diverse exhibition already resonating with audiences. Carbon_Dating’s tactile and relatable qualities of grass are attracting wide audience interest.
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Most of us barely consider our relationship with grass, beyond the chore of weekly backyard mowing. Few will be aware that native grasslands are widely threatened. Grasses, including the six featured in this exhibition – kangaroo, Queensland blue, scented top, black spear, barbed wire and curly Mitchell – are at risk from loss of habitat, the pasture grasses introduced for cattle and sheep in the 1800s and, more recently, changes in climate.
For curator Beth Jackson “that’s the strength of the show, which has embedded relationships with First Nations artists”.
“There is an idea of how we can connect to country or care for country,” Jackson says. “As a non-indigenous person, that can be challenging.”
Intricate details of these native grasses are profiled in Armstrong’s videos with abstracted close-up observations evoking their delicacy and beauty, but also importance to the environment, insects and animals. Armstrong explores these issues imaginatively, asking what a “community of care” might look like for these enigmatic flowering plants.
Environmental issues are often explored through art and this exhibition, using grass, is highly relatable with a positive message: we can all make a difference. To Jackson it makes perfect sense.
“Our relationship with the environment is cultural, and it can be creative,” she says. “When we bring art to look at how we engage with ecologies, it is relational and process-driven. Sharing that with peers creates art that is central to our ways of interfacing with the world.”
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This project was instigated in 2019, coming about through an extension of Armstrong’s interests in building networks between people and place.
“I was looking for a species that was misrepresented or misunderstood, and I became very interested, through talking to Professor Jennifer Firn at QUT, about native grasses,” he says. “Carbon_Dating is a mixture of socially engaged art practice and a campaign, which brings together my passions – contemporary art and environmental activism.”
While not every artist is a gardener, artists were assisted in the process with an object developed for the exhibition by lead artist Donna Davis. The Interweaver – also in the exhibition – incorporates a grass seed magnifier and images of grasses – prompt cards that could be inscribed – and a miniature screen to transmit images and sound (by Luke Lickfold) from Armstrong’s site in Samford, just outside Brisbane, to connect with the group statewide.
Many of the 15 exhibiting artists originally created a local grassland “mound”, a microcosm of what could take place in future landscapes. The varied nature of the subsequent art responses is intriguing, with Liz Capelin imprinting seed heads from barbed wire, scented top and kangaroo grass into ceramic vessels. Hilary Coulter’s embroidery on hoops titled POV highlights the way knowledge hones our vision, and Merinda Davies imagines humans as seed spreaders through clothing as a collaborator and co-conspirator with the natural world. Donna Davis creates Interwoven around the idea of an imaginative fusion of human with a plant in the sharing of breath.
For every artist involved, the project has transformed their personal and professional relationships with grass, with many now advocating for and actively growing these grasses in their own spaces and community spaces. The exhibition is also inspiring venues and audiences with its exploration of art and science in the light of cultural and indigenous understandings.
Carbon_Dating puts native grasses on a wider agenda but the exhibition also celebrates an innovative reinvention of the multidisciplinary potential for artistic intelligence and relationships.
After Atherton the exhibition goes to the Qantas Founders Museum at Longreach and next to the Bundaberg Regional Art Gallery.
Carbon_Dating continues at Tablelands Regional Gallery, Atherton, until February 25.