Professor Amy Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles

Students from Arcadia College and the Silkwood School joined Southern Cross University researchers and visited the Gondwana Rainforest at Natural Arch to walk and map the site through drawing, photography and video. They then spent several studio days creating further mappings and artworks, co-analyzing and co-creating further data from the original maps. This exhibition showcases a selection of this work. The Australian site component of the project has a Visual Arts Education and Environmental Education focus. Engaging the method of a/r/tography and building on first people’s Indigenous connection to walking the land as ‘songlines’ ‘strings’ or ‘Dreaming tracks,’ ancient passages, pathways, and how these routes are enacted as cartographies of the landscape, the inquiry on the Australian site engaged a rich cartography of place, culture, history and identity. The sites of the Gondwana Rainforests in South East Queensland are the most extensive subtropical rainforests in the world. This ancient world heritage site arouses transnational and intra-national storytelling about human-land relations and the complex connections between identity and space for Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians through the lens of homelands and languages.Specifically, the students investigated the site through a complex and entangled process of socio-historical-cultural cartographies. These cartographies have at their centre, an attention to sensorial, embodied experience with the site. We engaged in a deep mapping of connections and experience through the languages of science, Art and sociology. The researchers collaboratively walked the sites cyclically over time, mapping the encounters and experiences through photography, video, drawing, and visual journaling as a sustainable living inquiry. From this a/r/tographic fieldwork, the researchers analysed the information they gathered a/r/tographically, reflectively and diffractively. Through this process, the researchers created artful expressions and languages in paint, video, audio, poetry and photography that ensured a further layer of a/r/tographic renderings and analyses. Through the transnational partnerships we evaluated the inquiry with and in relation to the international networks, opening readings of the respective sites. As a consequence of this work, a curriculum for both Visual Arts Education and Environmental Education students will be developed, that focuses on embodied methods of a/r/tography and walkography to inform pedagogy.

The Australian site of the Mapping A/r/tography project engaged the method of a/r/tography and acknowledging the Australian first people’s Indigenous connection to walking the land as ‘songlines’ ‘strings’ or ‘Dreaming tracks,’ ancient passages, pathways, the inquiry explored how these routes are enacted as cartographies of the landscape. Thus, the inquiry on the Australian site engaged a rich cartography of place, culture, history and identity on and around the Gondwana Rainforest in South East Queensland.
The sites of the Gondwana Rainforests are the most extensive subtropical rainforests in the world. This ancient world heritage site aroused transnational and intra-national storytelling about human-land relations and the complex connections between identity and space for Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians through the lens of homelands and languages.
The research team chose to engage secondary and primary (elementary) school students to join them in the inquiry. As a first step, we invited Indigenous Elders to share their knowledge of Country with the students prior to the site visits in order to understand the correct protocols and to engage with deep knowledge of the site. The students were then positioned and trained as a/r/tographic co-researchers who then collaboratively walked the site cyclically over time, mapping the encounters and experiences through as a sustainable living inquiry.
Students from Arcadia Secondary College and the Silkwood School on the Gold Coast joined Southern Cross University researchers and visited the Gondwana Rainforest at the site of Natural Arch. They walked and mapped the site through drawing, photography and video. From this a/r/tographic fieldwork, they then spent several studio days creating further mappings and artworks, co-analyzing and co-creating further data from the original maps, which included drawing, painting, poetry and speculative fiction. This exhibition showcases a co-curated selection of this work.