Regional soils as pigments. Image courtesy of Imagine the Land/Karma Megan Barnes.
KARMA BARNES
Karma Barnes is a visual, installation, participatory and social practice artist from Auckland, New Zealand based on Bundjalung Country, in the Northern Rivers of NSW, Australia. Karma co-directs the Imagine the Land Project (IML) which cultivates relationships between people, art and nature through creating works from soils and natural pigments. The project which began in 2009 has engaged over 10,000 people in collaborative art-making through public art exhibitions producing large scale site-specific installations. Engagement and participation are integral to her work, as well as drawing on large numbers of people to collaborate on colossal scale projects produced from local terrains.
Imagine the Land Project's art installations are made from soil pigments and minerals gathered from the local terrains and pre-disturbed sites within the locality of the produced installations. The project has a methodology of community engagement and connecting to place through exploring local stories, histories and collective ontologies of the land through its pigments. IML's work addresses critical relationships within the context of the local and global environment and seeks to foster compassionate relationships between the participants and the environment. The work offers participants an opportunity to have a direct tactile, sensory and conceptual response to nature, impermanence and interconnectedness. The soil itself is the medium, catalyst and messenger for the artistic journey.
Karma's work examines how we are formed and informed by relationship through the intersections of nature and culture. Collaboration and community are key as her participatory practices build shared experiences in the making. Karma's work is inspired by her deep fascination with the endless cycles of life and death, creation and destruction and how we are shaped and changed by our internal and external relationships, elements and impermanence.
Karma's installation exhibitions and projects have included; MACRO Asilo - The Rome Museum of Contemporary Art (2019), Te Uru - West Auckland Regional Gallery (NZ 2016, 2014), YWCA National Child Protection Launch (NSW, 2016) The Bhoomi Festival (New Delhi, 2015), The Wallace Gallery (New Zealand 2012), The Wellington Museum of Land & Sea (New Zealand 2011) and The Villa de Leyva Museum (Colombia 2010).
Images courtesy of Imagine the Land/Karma Megan Barnes.