Donna Davis
QRAA Digital Art Award Winner
Judith Wright Art Centre
Artist Statement
IMplant 010 [entangled relations] plays with ideas around biological and ecological hosts with respect to habitat loss; exploring ideas around conservation and inter-species relationships to creatively consider ideas of displacement and imagined interventions as a result of unprecedented and uncertain ecological futures.
This speculative work depicts a human implant device designed to act as a conduit for symbiotic interspecies connection, postulating mycelium as the integral connector between species. The mycelium device appears to float in space as it awaits a human host and compatible plant species to complete the new multi-species union.
Allowing the human to offer themselves as landscape this speculative ‘implant’ explores the idea of agency, manipulation, adaptation and mutation to invite viewers to think about their own relationships with the more than human world.
Ultimately, my work seeks to evoke empathy and contemplation, toying with the uncomfortable reality of habitat loss coupled with futuristic ides of genetically modified interspecies organisms; inviting personal reflection on the direction we are heading as a species.
About the artists
Donna Davis is a multi-disciplinary artist who examines human and non-human relationships with respect to ecological health, and is often embedded within ecological research projects to inspire her practice. Playing between science fact and science fiction, her work tells stories that examine ecological systems through a creative lens; exploring imagined futures and constructing new ways of ‘seeing’ complex natural systems and our role within them.
Davis has exhibited widely in solo and selected group exhibitions, had her work feature in international, state and national touring exhibitions; won prizes such as Sunshine Coast Environmental Award, Queensland Regional Art Award, and been a finalist in Waterhouse Natural Science Art Prize, Northern Beaches Environmental Art and Design Prize and Sunshine Coast Art Awards. Davis has undertaken residencies with: Queensland State Archives, Brisbane Botanic Gardens, Queensland Herbarium, Department of Environment and Science, Australian Tropical Herbarium and University of Miami. She holds a Bachelor of Arts (ART) for Curtin University and has works held in both public and private collections.
Credits: Donna Davis
URL: https://donnadavisartist.weebly.com/