TarraWarra International 2013: Animate/Inanimate

Six contemporary artists explore connections between the animate and inanimate worlds.

TarraWarra Museum of Art celebrates its tenth anniversary year in 2013 with the launch of the inaugural TarraWarra International 2013, presenting the exhibition Animate/Inanimate. This exhibition acknowledges and explores the global context for the work of Australian artists, while reflecting upon the significance, history and vulnerability of the landscape in which the Museum is situated.

In the context of fast changing global economies, artists from around the world are creating haunting works that consider the profound interconnections between diverse life forms (natural, animal and human). Exploring the impact of global economic and climatic changes on our natural and animal environments, the artists in this exhibition create works that establish links between creativity and the plight of our human, animal and natural environments. Animate/Inanimate contemplates the precarity of life, and invites a consideration of the ways in which the animate and inanimate can co-exist in the form of an exchange.

The exhibition artists are Allora & Calzadilla, U.S citizens based in Puerto Rico; Amar Kanwar who lives and works in New Delhi, India; Janet Laurence who lives and works in Sydney, Australia; Lin Tianmiao who was born in China and has lived in Beijing since her return there from the U.S in 1994; and Louise Weaver who lives and works in Melbourne, Australia. From a sculptural installation that draws on the native Australian animal collection of the Melbourne Museum and recorded footage from the nearby Healesville Sanctuary, to a 15-metre long sculpture made of synthetic human skeleton bones wrapped in silken threads, and a film that charts the resistance of local communities in Orissa, India, to the industrial interventions taking place, Animate/Inanimate considers the natural and animal worlds in the context of global change.