Visual Ecologies: Artistic Research Transversing Stable, Dynamic and Interstitial Relations in an Australian Settler Colonial Context

Using artistic and scientific reference points, I focus on two of my artworks that exemplify creative encountering as a self-organizational ecosystem. Alternative exhibition and educational sites beyond the archive locate my work in community art education as a space of creative practice and pedagogical knowledge creation. Locutionary work in alternative spaces entails traversing archives for interstitial ancestral stories with the artistic collective of Indigenous and non-Indigenous women, ‘SISTAS Holding Space’ (SHS). Experimental visual ecologies are discussed in metaphoric and literal ways. A natural occurrence of desert ecosystems in Newman, Western Australia exemplifies how networks can be conceived as an ecology of practice, rather than reliant on individual dispositions. The concept of a ‘counter-encounter’ creates new interstitial pedagogical mechanics to countermand dominant discovery and progress narratives. The resultant visual pattern morphologies trouble historical ‘encounters’ and relations in the contested space of Australia's settler colonial context.

Keywords: community art education ; desert ecosystems ; ecology of practice ; Indigenous ; pattern morphologies ; self-organizational system