How to Make a Bomb and Battlefield: The Garden as a Site of Critique and Care
Artist Gabriella Hirst will discuss two recent and ongoing projects in conversation with curator and editor Kate Rhodes. Hirst’s most recent project, Battlefield, 2014–, is a garden installation of plants named after battles or other acts of historicised conflict at the Kunsthalle Osnabrück, Germany. How to Make a Bomb, 2015–, is a durational gardening and rose-propagation project that examines the structural connections between horticulture, state power and nuclear colonialism. Hirst will discuss what it means to physically tend to history and to words, together with ideas of gardening as conquest, care as control and the critique and subsequent censorship that arose from the recent realisation of How to Make a Bomb.
About the panel
Gabriella Hirst was born and grew up on Cammeraygal land (Australia) and is currently living between Berlin and London. She works primarily with moving image, performance and the garden as a site of critique and care. Hirst’s practice and research explores capture and control. Her most recent projects consider possible relationships between plant taxonomies, landscape painting, art conservation and nuclear history. Hirst was the recipient of the 2020 ACMI/Ian Potter Moving Image Commission, is a previous Marten Bequest Scholar and a recipient of the John Crampton Fellowship. She is an associate lecturer in Media Studies with the School of Architecture, Royal College of the Arts, London.
Kate Rhodes was born and grew up on Latje Latje Country in regional Victoria and is a curator at State Library Victoria and doctoral candidate in the architecture and curatorial programs at Monash University. She was Foundation Curator at RMIT Design Hub Gallery for its first ten years, and has worked on art, craft, design and architecture exhibitions, workshops and creative activities both in Australia and internationally since 2000. She was Creative Director of the State of Design Festival and Curator of its Design for Everyone program, and has held curatorial roles at the Australian Centre for Design, Craft Victoria, Melbourne Fashion Festival, National Design Centre and the National Gallery of Victoria (all Melbourne). As editor of architecture and design magazine Artichoke, Kate founded the ongoing Artichoke Night School—a forum for taking design ideas in print into a live discussion. In 2019, she co-edited the award-winning book An Unreliable Guide to Jewellery by Lisa Walker with Nella Themelios.
Form x Content is a program of online and on-campus talks delivered during Monash’s teaching semesters. Thematically driven, the series features the voices of renowned First Nations, Australian and international artists, designers, architects, curators and academics, and aims to stimulate new thinking and encourage debate and discussion around contemporary ideas. The program is delivered every Wednesday lunchtime during Monash University teaching semesters, both online and broadcast on the Big Screen at Monash Caulfield.
In 2022, Form x Content considers the ways in which individuals and organisations are changing and adapting in response to current conditions, including the disconnection many have experienced as a result of the pandemic.
The Semester 2 theme, ‘On Care’, explores how the disciplines of art, design and architecture can engender and embed principles of caring, inclusivity, safety and wellbeing through research and practice.
Form x Content is free and accessible to all.
Join us Wednesday lunchtimes at 1pm—online and on the Big Screen, Caulfield campus
Form x Content Presented by Monash Art, Design and Architecture, programmed by Monash University Museum of Art | MUMA.
Event Details
- Date:
- 31 August 2022 at 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm
- Venue:
- Online
- Categories:
- Fine Art
Description
Artist Gabriella Hirst will discuss two recent and ongoing projects in conversation with curator and editor Kate Rhodes. Hirst’s most recent project, Battlefield, 2014–, is a garden installation of plants named after battles or other acts of historicised conflict at the Kunsthalle Osnabrück, Germany. How to Make a Bomb, 2015–, is a durational gardening and rose-propagation project that examines the structural connections between horticulture, state power and nuclear colonialism. Hirst will discuss what it means to physically tend to history and to words, together with ideas of gardening as conquest, care as control and the critique and subsequent censorship that arose from the recent realisation of How to Make a Bomb.
About the panel
Gabriella Hirst was born and grew up on Cammeraygal land (Australia) and is currently living between Berlin and London. She works primarily with moving image, performance and the garden as a site of critique and care. Hirst’s practice and research explores capture and control. Her most recent projects consider possible relationships between plant taxonomies, landscape painting, art conservation and nuclear history. Hirst was the recipient of the 2020 ACMI/Ian Potter Moving Image Commission, is a previous Marten Bequest Scholar and a recipient of the John Crampton Fellowship. She is an associate lecturer in Media Studies with the School of Architecture, Royal College of the Arts, London.
Kate Rhodes was born and grew up on Latje Latje Country in regional Victoria and is a curator at State Library Victoria and doctoral candidate in the architecture and curatorial programs at Monash University. She was Foundation Curator at RMIT Design Hub Gallery for its first ten years, and has worked on art, craft, design and architecture exhibitions, workshops and creative activities both in Australia and internationally since 2000. She was Creative Director of the State of Design Festival and Curator of its Design for Everyone program, and has held curatorial roles at the Australian Centre for Design, Craft Victoria, Melbourne Fashion Festival, National Design Centre and the National Gallery of Victoria (all Melbourne). As editor of architecture and design magazine Artichoke, Kate founded the ongoing Artichoke Night School—a forum for taking design ideas in print into a live discussion. In 2019, she co-edited the award-winning book An Unreliable Guide to Jewellery by Lisa Walker with Nella Themelios.
Form x Content is a program of online and on-campus talks delivered during Monash’s teaching semesters. Thematically driven, the series features the voices of renowned First Nations, Australian and international artists, designers, architects, curators and academics, and aims to stimulate new thinking and encourage debate and discussion around contemporary ideas. The program is delivered every Wednesday lunchtime during Monash University teaching semesters, both online and broadcast on the Big Screen at Monash Caulfield.
In 2022, Form x Content considers the ways in which individuals and organisations are changing and adapting in response to current conditions, including the disconnection many have experienced as a result of the pandemic.
The Semester 2 theme, ‘On Care’, explores how the disciplines of art, design and architecture can engender and embed principles of caring, inclusivity, safety and wellbeing through research and practice.
Form x Content is free and accessible to all.
Join us Wednesday lunchtimes at 1pm—online and on the Big Screen, Caulfield campus
Form x Content Presented by Monash Art, Design and Architecture, programmed by Monash University Museum of Art | MUMA.