NEWS

Karma Barnes has embarked on two significant international opportunities this month: presenting her installation Co-lapses at the Arte Laguna Prize Finalist Exhibition in Venice, Italy, and engaging in an Art Research and Installation Project at Cittadellarte – Fondazione Pistoletto, Italy, as part of the UNIDEE Residency Programs.

A large-scale iteration of the Co-Lapses installation opened this week at the Arsenale Nord. The durational work features ten elegant, organically shaped clay and pigment pods suspended from the ceiling. Each vessel contains fine sand blended with pigments sourced locally in Italy. Over the course of each day, the ten meticulously crafted forms release streams of coloured sand onto the floor, gradually constructing peaked, mountain-like formations that symbolise enduring relationships between the human body and the landscape. The work will process a cubic meter of sand over the exhibition, filling the floor area that it occupies in the historic building.

Co-lapses, originally developed for her Relative Terrains exhibition at Lismore Regional Gallery and later relocated to Grafton Regional Gallery in 2023 as a displaced show carries the weight of its origins in a region impacted by the 2022 foods. Barnes has since expanded the work into a large-scale installation specifically created for Venice, where biomimicry-inspired sculptural forms will release pigment-mixed sands in a durational process, forming a shifting terrain that reflects geological and environmental change.

Co-lapses was selected from over 20,000 submissions by the jury of the Arte Laguna Prize and is on exhibition alongside a selection of international works at the Arsenale Nord in Venice until December 8, 2024.

Following the Arte Laguna Prize, Barnes will join the UNIDEE Residency Program to pursue Everything is Made of Everything Else, a research project exploring themes of hope, compassion, and interdependence in response to climate change.

Informed by the compounded climatic challenges faced by her Northern NSW community, this project emphasises creative recovery and resilience through arts-based practice. The residency will allow Barnes to engage in international discourse on community adaptation and collective transformation, expanding the reach of her practice.