[spectre] Biotech Art – Revisited 9 April – 2 May 2009

[EAF Director]

EXPERIMENTAL ART FOUNDATION

Lion Arts Centre North Tce [West End] Adelaide South Australia

+61-(0)8-82117505 info at eaf.asn.au www.eaf.asn.au

Gallery Hours 11-5pm Tues-Fri. 2-5 Sat

Media Release



Biotech Art – Revisited

9 April – 2 May 2009

exhibition • symposium • workshop

eaf.asn.au/2009/biotech09.html

In his final exhibition project as director of the EAF Melentie 
Pandilovski revisits a signature theme – art and biotechnology. Biotech 
Art – Revisited includes an exhibition (of the same name), a workshop – 
Vital micro-ecologies: splice, dice, duplicate, and a free public 
symposium – Life, death & biotechnia. The project plans to tease out 
connections between art, culture, biotechnology & genomics, with 
leading Australian and international artists and theorists set to 
install & present their recent works.



exhibition • Biotech Art – Revisited

Opening 6pm Wednesday 8 April

CURATOR Melentie Pandilovski

ARTISTS/SCIENTISTS Trish Adams, Bio-Kino (Guy Ben-Ary & Tanja 
Visosevic), BioHome (Catherine Fargher & Terumi Narushima), André 
Brodyk, Gary Cass & Donna Franklin, FOaM (Maja Kuzmanovic & Nik 
Gaffney), Niki Sperou, Paul Thomas in collaboration with Kevin 
Raxworthy, Tissue Culture & Art Project (Oron Catts & Ionat Zurr)

The works in the exhibition will present an array of approaches – from 
the humorous and playful to the deadly serious – from the way we think 
about the ‘origins’ of life, the scale and dimensions of living matter, 
to relationships with nourishment, death, fashion and appearance. 
Australia’s leading international artists in the field – Tissue Culture 
& Art Project – will exhibit mark II of their award winning NoArk, a 
bioreactor that houses a ‘chimerical blob’ or a ‘sub-life 
neo-organism’. What to call these semi-living cells is called to 
question,– how to think about them at all? BioHome will exhibit/perform 
The Chromosome Knitting Project, an event that blurs the distinction 
between home and laboratory, between expert and novice. Guy Ben-Ary & 
Tanya Visosevic have invented what they call the ‘bio-cinematic’ which 
presents ‘Bio-Art as a Freak Show’ with The Living Screen, whilst Donna 
Franklin & Gary Cass will display living cloth/skin in Micro ‘be’ 
Fermented Fashion. Nanoessense is a foray into nanotechnology by Paul 
Thomas and Kevin Raxworthy, whilst André Brodyk works with 
representation at a minuscule scale by developing his own strain of 
bacteria in the installation Proto-animate19. Niki Sperou is enamoured 
of the aesthetic and cultural poetics of vegetal micro bacterial 
chimera in Man a Plant; whilst still in the vegetal world but at a 
human-scale FOaM takes a political stance in their multi-nodal 
groWorld, initiating actions using the forces of design, permaculture 
and technology. FOaM’s mantra is: ‘For more serendipity and 
cross-fertilisation – minimise borders and maximise edges!’



symposium • Life, death & biotechnia

Wednesday 8th April. 10am – 5pm.

Venue: Mercury Cinema. Admission is free

CONVENORS Melentie Pandilovski & Linda Cooper

SPEAKERS Marcello Costa FAA, Professor of Neurophysiology, Flinders 
University; Linda Cooper, Director of the Bragg Initiative in the 
Department of the Premier and Cabinet South Aust; Niki Sperou, Dr 
Catherine Fargher & Terumi Narushima, Oron Catts, Dr Paul Thomas, Tania 
Visosevic, Vicki Sowry, André Brodyk, Dr Trish Adams

Life, death & biotechnia is a one-day symposium that brings together 
the artists & scientists participating in the Biotech Art – Revisited 
project, along with others involved in the discourses surrounding 
art/science collaborations. The speakers will present their most recent 
questions, understandings and misreadings relating to ethical 
relationships to partial life, the endless limitations and 
opportunities for artists and scientists to (mis)understand the others 
disciplines, challenges for all kinds of taxonomies, the methods and 
manners of the ubiquitous  ‘infiltration’ of biotechnicity into 
everyday life. Bookings can be made by emailing info at eaf.asn.au. 
Include your name and those of any others attending with you.

* further: eaf.asn.au/2009/biotech09-symposium.html

workshop • Splice, dice, duplicate

Tuesday 14 – Friday 17 April

Venue: Flinders University, Health Sciences Building 4.41

Department of Medical Biotechnology

APPLY NOW Applications close 20 March 5pm c.o.b

WORKSHOP LEADER Niki Sperou

As a part of the Biotech Art – Revisited project the Experimental Art 
Foundation has organized a workshop titled Vital micro-ecologies: 
splice, dice, duplicate. The workshop – led by the South Australian 
biotech artist Niki Sperou and hosted by the Department of Medical 
Biotechnology at Flinders University – will serve as a theoretical and 
practical introduction to the creation of biotech art. Participation in 
the workshop is free. Applications are now invited from artists, 
curators, writers & others interested in participating. In an email 
addressed to info at eaf.asn.au with the subject line Biotech Art 
Workshop, tell us in no more than 200 words why you want to attend the 
workshop, what you hope to get from it etc. Attach a 1 page CV.

* further: eaf.asn.au/2009/biotech09-workshop.html


For more images, interviews or more detail contact the EAF Program 
Manager for Design & Publicity Teri Hoskin by email at info at eaf.asn.au 
or by phone [08] 8211 7505


“A ghost is haunting the arts, the ghost of biotechnology.”
Melentie Pandilovski, The Ghost of Biotechnology: Art of the Biotech Era