BIANCA TAINSH
BIANCA TAINSH
Intimate Organisms, opening night at Outer Space, Brisbane, 2023. Photograph by Louis Lim
BIOGRAPHY
Through a hybrid practice of contemporary art, ecofeminism and fluid forms of ecological and documentary activities, Australian artist Bianca Tainsh doesn’t redefine the landscape so much as emancipate it from the confines of patriarchal constructs. Quantitative speculation and value expectations are vanquished to reveal an alternate reality, where no boundaries exist between life forms, time, substance, and the Self. Entropy eludes suppression.
Tainsh’s experiential works are embedded in heterogeneous research and existential exploration. Archives of self-generated, foraged, and cyber-sourced material, saturated with semiotic rhetoric become the provenance for video, digital and semi-traditional media, assemblages, and live art, engendering a reflection on contemporary dilemmas and feminine experience.
The landscape of Lake Weyba has become Tainsh’s platform to survey and experiment with concepts that destabilise human paradigms. Land Art and feminist theory bind with science and neo-animistic practice, all fortified by a process of deep observation to generate art projects unique in form and vision.
In activated spaces, audiences are invited to deeply engage with issues, such as the cyber-saturated human’s disconnect from the natural world, mass consumerism, and the search for autonomy and spirituality in the digital age. By generating intimate moments of connection, Tainsh’s projects endeavour to reverberate with her audience and realise actual social transformation.
In her latest projects Tainsh has collaborated with scientists to create Myc-a, a multi-species biome of flora and microfauna connected by a network of mycorrhizal fungi, a poster-child for diversity and mutuality. A new collaboration with Artificial Intelligence researchers will explore the possibilities of converging the spectrum of Earth’s intelligences – human, more-than-human and digital. Can mutual endeavour and respectful interaction create an alliance of inter-intelligence stewardship in this epoch of corporatised AI and ecological demise.
Tainsh has exhibited and held live art performances and events across Australia and overseas. She has participated in international residency programs and has been the recipient of an ArtStart grant, among other accolades and awards. As an advocate of Art for Change, Tainsh has been invited to present a TEDx talk, webinars, and has sat as a panelist for symposiums. Her artistic education includes a 1st Class Honours Degree from RMIT University, and to compliment the social aspects of her practice she studied Arts & Community Engagement at the Victorian College of the Arts.
I live and practice on the lands of the Gubbi Gubbi people, their sovereignty never ceded. To all First Nations people, I express my deep respect for your culture, your connection to Country, and your fundamental knowledge of stewarding the land. I look forward to the day when that knowledge finds its place in government agenda, and we all live together as respectable custodians on First Nations land.
- Bianca Tainsh