BIANCA TAINSH
A TOPOGRAPHY FOR REFLECTION
Matter, 2021, digital image by Bianca Tainsh
A Topography for Reflection, 2021 - ongoing project
A Topography for Reflection emerged through a collaboration between Bianca Tainsh and Katie Harris-MacLeod to produce a series of performances at Lake Weyba for the Floating Land Festival. With the looming threat of Covid lockdowns a videographer was commissioned to capture the performances in case an audience could not be present. In the leadup to the performances the project evolved both conceptually and aesthetically through a process of expeditions in the Lake Weyba landscape, each as its own provocation exploring Land art, feminine response and the techno-human relationship with nature.
Tainsh is currently working on a manifest of the project as an art film that will converge the performances with other Lake Weyba phenomena, abstracting the edges between reality, myth and time.
FLOATING LAND DESCRIPTION
Recomposed as a watery amphitheatre, Lake Weyba becomes both protagonist and platform for a series of performative exchanges, where interior and exterior landscapes merge. In this fluid setting artists Bianca Tainsh and Katie Harris-MacLeod will present a series of seven performances of ritual and score that converge live art and techno-digital culture, creating a friction between the traditional and the contemporary.
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In this multi-layered project the artists will subtly respond to Weyba’s natural and cultural timescape. At the same time experimental, playful and spiritual, the performances will explore the relationship of human body and water body, by transcending into the material and spiritual landscape. Land art, feminine response and the techno-human relationship with nature will be influential themes, but Weyba will have final say, directing the mood through the elements – light, wind, rain.
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But there is a twist...each act is framed for the production of an art film. Through yet another lens A Topography for Reflection abstracts the experience of genre, metaphor and time.
Image 1: Photograph by Jennifer Dean, Image 2: Photograph by Ben Draper, Image 3: Clay - by Bianca Tainsh & Katie Harris-MacLeod.
Image 1: Photograph by Wayne Barbe, Image 2: Photograph by Wayne Barbe, Image 3: Clay post-performance photograph by Bianca Tainsh.
Image 1: Drift - by Bianca Tainsh, Image 2: Mirror performance 'selfie' by artists, Image 3: Photograph by Ben Draper.