Ross Manning.
Strange Weather
University of the Sunshine Coast Art Gallery
Artist Statement
‘Matter and Matrix (Wallum Heathland)’ 2024 builds a new techno-physical landscape that mirrors the relocation process of a wallum heathland for the development of the University of the Sunshine Coast. This intricate process saw a cut and paste of the physical landscape, where each plant was GPS tracked and replanted within an accuracy of up to 10mm to its original collected ecosystem.
Recorded onsite at the new location of the wetlands, the pristine aquamarine and blue waterscapes of ‘Matter and Matrix (Wallum Heathland)’ allude to the complex falsehoods and regenerative philosophies involved in the translocation of this land segment. This new virtual yet physical landscape mirrors the high-tech recording and GPS gridding of a natural environment, both as a physical transportation of a landscape like Wallum Heathland or via the perpetual satellite mapping of the land online.
About the artists
Ross Manning lives and works in Brisbane, Australia. Known for his exploration of our ongoing relationship with technology, his primary focus is the power and agency of the electronic image, the digitisation of the natural world, and the ephemeral nature of data and machines. His work is often comprised of interactions between light, sound and physics, setting up networks of objects that operate according to their own logic.
Whilst his work addresses science and technology, it also references the legacy of minimalism, sound art and expanded cinema.
In 2017, the Institute of Modern Art (Brisbane) presented a survey exhibition of Manning’s work that toured to venues across Australia between 2018-20. His work has been included in the 2016 Shanghai Biennale and the 2014 Biennale of Sydney. Manning has received major commissions from the Institute of Modern Art (Brisbane, 2015), Len Lye Centre | Govett-Brewster Gallery (New Zealand, 2016), and the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (Seoul, South Korea, 2016).
Credits: Ross Manning