
I N S T A L L A T I O N | P A R T I C I P A T O R Y | S O C I A L P R A C T I C E A R T I S T
I M A G I N E T H E L A N D P R O J E C T
A R T T H E R A P Y N O R T H E R N R I V E R S

RELATIVE TERRAINS 2023
Lismore Regional Offsite Gallery
Hosted by Grafton Regional Gallery
16 Sept - 12 Nov
Karma Barnes and Robért Franken
​
The Relative Terrains exhibition was scheduled for January 2023 at the Lismore Regional Gallery but with the heartbreaking damage to the gallery during the devastating floods earlier this year the Grafton Regional Gallery has snapped up the opportunity to house the show along with a number of other displaced exhibitions.
​
Relative Terrains maps the dramatic shifts in our environmental cycles and how this informs our internal and external experiences. The work traverses the geological terrain and volcanic landscapes of the Northern Rivers and explores how we, the inhabitants of the land, form and change with the forces of the elements, time and life experiences. The exhibition artworks will include a series of large-scale installations and suspended paintings produced in a range of mediums including local pigments.
​
Grafton Regional Gallery, NSW, Australia
Exhibition 16 September – 12 November 2023
Public Program 17 August Lismore Regional Gallery
Public Program 7 October Grafton Regional Gallery
​

Compounded Caldera
Featuring in WILD PIGMENT PROJECT,
curated by Tilke Elkins
Currently at New Mexico State University Art Museum, Los Cruses, New Mexico, USA 2023
Form & Concept, Santa Fe,
New Mexico, USA 2022.
​
Our human experience is composed of compounded responses. The artwork draws parallels between our relationships with each other and our connection to place. Compounded Caldera is a moment in time where bush fires, droughts, floods and an ongoing pandemic have ravaged our community in Northern New South Wales, Australia with little moment to exhale a breath before the next pressing moments of concerns take centre stage. The impacts of climate change have moved from subtle shifts and perturbations towards more obvious and compounding climatic events.
​
Form & Concept,
September 17 to December 23, 2022
​
NMSU Art Museum
Los Cruses, New Mexico, USA
June 22-September 16, 2023.

CHROMATIC TERRAINS SERIES AT
SALON, LUNDBERG GALLERY
The Salon Group Show showcases the work of 21 emerging and established Australian artists at the Lundberg Gallery, curated by Clive Sheridan,
​
Featuring the series Chromatic Terrains; A symphony of expansiveness.
Chromatic Terrains traverses a palimpsest of Earth's endless cycles of life and death, creation and destruction, over eons, produced by natural forces. Barnes has meticulously sourced these pigments from the disturbed landscapes of landslides, road cuts, and erosion from across the Bundjalung Country of the Northern Rivers. The raw materials reveal the transformative power of time and geological processes, igneous lava flows and pre-volcanic soils, created between than 26 and 250 million years ago.
​
The Chromatic Terrains series offers a meditative pause to reflect; inviting us to contemplate how we, as inhabitants of this land, change over time through internal and external experiences.
​
Chromatic Terrains proposes a phenomenological experience that invites the viewer's contemplation and imagination. Through this interaction, the work offers an opportunity for viewers to reflect on their own experiences of transformation and change, and to connect with the vastness and complexity of the world around them.
​
LUNDBERG GALLERY
Murwillumbah, NSW, Australia
26 April 26 - 29 July 2023

Tocca La Terra
Imagine the Land Project
MACRO Asilo
Museum of Contemporary Art Rome, Italy.
The Environmental and Participatory Art Installation Projects recent colossal size works from soils and pigments of Rome at the MACRO Asilo, Contemporary Art Gallery of Rome, Italy.
​
Imagine the Land Project collaborators Karma Barnes and Ekarasa Doblanovich were invited by curator Giorgio de Finis to exhibit their installation Tocca La Terra as part of the MACRO Asilo (“Hospitable Museum”) Project. Tocca la Terra (Touch the Earth). The work was created in collaboration with viewers at the MACRO Museum of Contemporary Art Rome, Italy.
​
Tocca la Terra was composed from Italian local soils, hand-gathered by Barnes and Doblanovic from the regional landscapes of Rome and Tuscany. These soils were ground by the artists into fine pigments and transformed into a 18m long art installation, filling one of the MACRO exhibition halls.

​Transformation-Through the Pressures of Time
'Transformation - Through the Pressures of Time' examines how we are formed and informed by relationships through the intersections of nature and culture, the endless cycles of life and death, creation and destruction and how we are shaped and changed by our internal and external experiences, elements and impermanence.
​
NRCG, Northern Rivers, NSW, Australia
