Carbon Matter(s) - AAANZ | The Art Association of Australia and New Zealand

Publication Details B5 softcover, 36 pp including cover page. ISBN: 978-0-646-83833-9

Author and/or Editor name/s Maria Cotter and Tess Cullen

Author and/or Editor bio/s Maria Cotter has held interests in environmental science, landscape history and writing since High School. With keen interests in human-environment interactions, cultural landscapes studies and place-based attachment, Maria worked as an Aboriginal cultural heritage specialist for a number of years. Currently she works with Tess in the Oorala Aboriginal Centre at UNE as part of a Team focused on supporting Indigenous students achieve at University.

Tess Cullen has an art practice that spans over 40 years. The current focus is landscape painting, showcasing the beauty of our natural environment, taking her back to the beginning of why she picked up a paintbrush in the first place. Alongside her painting Tess finds the art of creating mosaics from the recycled and up-cycled bits and pieces of our modern lives equally satisfying. Currently Tess is the President of the New England Art Society which manages the Armidale Art Gallery, encouraging local artists.

Year of Publication 2021

Publisher Carbon Imprints, Armidale

Abstract Carbon Matter(s) is a collaborative, mixed-media exhibition between poet and photo essayist Maria Cotter and landscape artist Tess Cullen that seeks to both fragment, and nuance, the scientific, environmental and rhetorical lens through which we, in a time of Climate Crisis, observe and interact with Carbon.

Maria’s image of blackened trees taken locally after the fires had raged in 2019 captured Tess’ painters heart. Arising then out of a casual conversation the exhibition seeks to further a dialogue between the creative pursuits of poetry, photography and painting, specifically by focusing on environmental observation in – and emotional connection to – place.

This dialogue coalesces as an exploration of the complexities of Carbon as matter as well as a subtle commentary on the ambiguities of current rhetorical matters of carbon.

The exhibition is framed as an exploratory contribution to the Creative Practice Doctorate being undertaken by Maria in the School of Humanities, Arts and Social Science at UNE, the title of which is: Carbon Cycles: Transdisciplinary Imaginings and the Poetics of Carbon.