Marnie Badham

With a twenty-five-year history of art and social justice in Australia and Canada, Marnie's research sits at the intersection of socially-engaged art practice, participatory methodologies and the politics of cultural measurement. Through aesthetic forms of encounter and exchange, her work brings together disparate groups of people in dialogue to examine and affect local issues. Her current focus includes a series of creative cartographies registering emotions in public space; expanded curation projects on the aesthetics and politics of food; and a book project The Social Life of Artist Residencies: connecting with people and place not your own examining the unintended colonial consequences and climate impacts of transnationalism and the prospects of localvorism.

In relation to the Climate Change Network, here are a few specific projects that bring people together in participatory research through creative engagement and dialogue about place and culture:

Listening to Country, Listening to Community: towards a co-created framework of people and place-based value and values for the Dandenong Creek Art Trail 2021, Vicki Couzens and Marnie Badham, place based and creative methods (walking and yarning) for intergenerational consultation with Traditional Owners to inform good practice in public art commissioning, LGA contract research.

Bruised Food: A Living Laboratory, 2019, curated by Marnie Badham and Francis Maravillas, featuring artists Keg de Souza with Lucien Alperstein, Arahmaiani, Rhett D’Costa, Elia Nurvista and Stephen Loo. Through an experimental approach to testing, creating, engaging with, and displaying artistic ephemera and documentation, Bruised Food presented a series of process-focused projects from trans-local artists (Asia / Australia) who activated their ecological, cultural and social sustainability questions through the lens of food economies of production, consumption and waste.

Food Art Research (FAR) Network, ongoing, is an international network of over twenty established artists that engage with the politics and aesthetics of food. FAR fosters creative connections between international members, across networks and local contexts and political engagement. We work together through dialogue, written texts, recipes, public learning outcomes, and long-term community collaborations.

Five Weeks in Spring: an emotional map of Lilydale, 2018 with Tammy Wong Hulbert – a participatory and durational place-based artwork aimed to register local citizens’ emotions in response to the changing natural environment including extreme weather events, land development and climate change. Commissioned as part of “Force of Nature” exhibition at Yarra Ranges Regional Gallery, curated by Gretel Taylor. (one of a series of emotional mapping projects)