Floating Land
Floating Land is Australia’s premiere art in the environment event, taking in sites across Noosa. Conceived in 2001 as a biennial outdoor sculptural program, Floating Land sees artists engaging with and working collaboratively with the environment to create projects and installations that leave no trace at the end of the event.
FLOATING LAND: ESCAPE MAKING
INVITING EXPRESSIONS OF INTEREST
So, we managed a brief escape recently. A group of us got together and left this place behind for a while. Granted, it was only for a few days, but it was enough to make most of us realise that things really could be a lot better.
Prior to this recent escape, we shared that we’d sensed a growing feeling that things had been getting a bit uncertain and tense in the world. Power has been becoming more and more concentrated, and the agency of everyday people is becoming more elusive. The environment is clearly suffering, as are people all over the world, with conflicts and disasters now a common backdrop to other affairs. And then there’s the matter of truth, which was already becoming a slippery beast through a philosophical lens, but now seems to be a damp lump of mouldable clay.
Did we solve any of the world’s problems while we were away? Probably not. But I think we sparked some new ideas and now we’re keen to see if anyone else has they’d like to add. We’re not trying to fix the world with an art installation, but we think they punch above their weight when it comes to keeping the conversation alive.
We’ve shared this before, but the title of the 2025 Floating Land Biennale is Floating Land: Escape making. It takes on the notion that the world is at a tipping point and the idea of abandoning the way we currently live has to be a serious consideration. For some, that might mean changing what we do or how we do it in order to preserve a way of life. For others, it might literally be about making an escape to somewhere else. But making is a proactive thing too. And as creative people, most of us make. This is where you come in.
We are inviting expressions of interest from artists who’d like to contribute projects to the 2025 artistic program. This program will be comprised of projects identified through this EOI process alongside a small number of directly commissioned works.
APPLICATIONS CLOSE MONDAY 6 JANUARY, 11.59PM
(remember, send your EOIs to floatingland@noosa.qld.gov.au)
KEY DATES
EOIs Open: Friday 22 November, 2024
EOIs Close: Monday 6 January, 2025
Applicants notified of outcome: Friday 31 January, 2025
Floating Land: Escape Making: 28 June – 27 July, 2025
FLOATING LAND: US AND THEM 2023 PROGRAM
Download your copy of the full 2023 Biennale program via the link below:
download programFLOATING LAND IN THE COUNCIL CHAMBERS
A large wall in the Council Chambers has been given over to surveying and celebrating a collection of Floating Land projects that have been presented since the biennale’s inception in 2021. Images of key projects rotate through the space and are refreshed on an annual basis. The current featured projects include Firings on the Lake by Rowley Drysdale, Ellen Appleby, Tony Grimshaw and Sue Coburn, together with various local ceramic artists and featuring a performance by Kabi Kabi man, Lyndon Davis (2009); and Custodians of the Interval by Juan Ford (2023).
ROWLEY DRYSDALE, ELLEN APPLEBY, TONY GRIMSHAW and SUSAN COBURN with various local ceramic artists. Performance by LYNDON DAVIS
Firings on the Lake (2009)
Producing one of the most iconic images from Floating Land’s history, Firings on the Lake saw a team of ceramic artists create a series of small volcanic sculptures on Lake Cootharaba in Boreen Point that functioned as floating kilns, fired in spectacular fashion at sunset. Situated against a dramatic backdrop, the kilns invited contemplation and quietude while referencing the volcanic origins of the area.
On one particularly special occasion, the firings were complimented by a performance by Kabi Kabi man, Lyndon Davis who played the digeridoo in the knee-deep water while fire and smoke billowed from the kilns not far beyond.
Firings on the Lake was part of Floating Land: Risings Seas, curated by Christine Ballinger in 2009
Photo: Raoul Slater
JUAN FORD
Custodians of the Interval (2023)
Celebrated for his hyper-realistic paintings, this project saw Juan Ford take what is typically the source material for his elaborate two-dimensional works and shifted it into a space that can be experienced in three dimensions.
Walking along the Park Road Boardwalk between Noosa National Park and Noosa Main Beach, the naturally treed space between the elevated platform and the sea opened to reveal a grouping of familiar yet discordant figures forms. Covered in native leaves, the idea of the natural (out there in nature), and the human, were collapsed into relative indistinction.
Ford’s installation prompted the dual idea that everything we do and are, is natural, and so much of what we do and are, is harming natural processes. More globally, we are inseparable from the environmental consequences of our actions, as all actions done to nature are done to ourselves.
Custodians of the Interval was part of Floating Land: Us and Them, curated by Michael Brennan in 2023.
Photo: Warwick Gow
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Main image: FL23 logo.