Sidebody

Penelope Cain

2 February 2022 - 20 February 2022

Free Admission

propagate study #3. Penelope Cain

‘We are contaminated by our encounters…’ writes Anthropologist Anna Tsing[1].
Sidebody takes as a starting point a plant in the New Caledonian rainforest, able to absorb toxic levels of nickel from the rocky soil, and recent research from the University of QLD Sustainable Minerals Institute. Bleeding blue nickel-rich sap when cut, Pycnantha accumulate initiates consideration of the space between Linnean kingdoms- animal, plant, mineral- to speculate mytho-poetically on proximal interdependencies, modes of restitution and gestures of care, in a time and land of climate concern.

Landscapes in their widest definition are central to Penelope Cain’s practice. In particular the colonised, extracted and transformed landscapes of the Anthropocene and the manifest marks of humans on the land. Informed by her research science background, her art practice is located interstitially between scientific knowledge and unearthing connective untold narratives in the world. Penelope Cain works with scientists, scientific data sets and concepts, and uses video, sound installation, flags, text and public participation in storytellings about the lands of the Anthropocene.