Current & Upcoming Projects
Conversations with the Forest
- Open studio - 53-55 Cronulla Avenue, Mermaid Beach (ongoing)
Cowgirls are Forever - solo exhibition
- The Condensery - 6 December 2025 – 16 February 2026
earth refuge - solo exhibition
- Moreton Bay Regional Gallery - July - November 2025
We are all eating and being eaten - solo exhibition
- Lismore Regional Gallery - 2 May - 22 June 2025
Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Photography Award 2024 - finalist
- HOTA, Home of the Arts Gallery - Sat 14 Dec 2024 - Sun 11 May 2025
Hold me Closer Tony Danza - The Farm- visual designer
- Horizon Festival, Sunshine Coast - May 2025
Das Experiment - The Farm
- visual design
- Purple Festival, TanzZeit, Berlin January 23-26 2025
10 - The Farm
- visual design & performer
- Bleach Festival - 01 - 10 August 2024.
Carbon Dating
- ‘Sewing the Seeds’ - QLD regional tour
- Dogwood Crossing Gallery, Miles, QLD - 23 March – 11 May 2024
- Warwick Art Gallery, Warwick, QLD - 13 June – 13 July 2024
- Redland Art Gallery, Cleveland, QLD- 11 August – 29 September 2024
- Caloundra Regional Gallery, Caloundra, QLD - 18 Oct – 8 December 2024
- Tablelands Regional Gallery, Atherton, QLD - 17 January – 25 February 2025
- Qantas Founders Museum, Longreach, QLD - 15 March – 15 June 2025
- Bundaberg Regional Art Gallery, Bundaberg, QLD - 18 July – 7 September 2025
Movement Art Practice Research Residency Exhibition of archive - MAP resides
- Research exchange residency, Ōtautahi Christchurch - Sutton House - 15 January - 26 February 2024
- Centre of Contemporary Art Toi Moroki, Ōtautahi Christchurch - 18 May - 26 May 2024
SITE LAB// Small Gestures Towards Infinity
Breathing Space, Moving Space, Resting Space, 2023
SITE LAB// Small Gestures Towards Infinity– a temporary public art commissioning project presented by Arts Northern Rivers and Lismore Regional Gallery in Lismore CBD, July to September 2023.
'Breathing Space, Moving Space, Resting Space' is a three part living installation connecting us to our shared breath through care, reflection and emergence.
Breathing Space - invites us to consider our collective grief – human and more-than-human. You are invited to leave memories and messages with the moss which will be digested into an audio score. Mosses are ancient prehistoric beings, with histories dating back to 450 million years. Moss have survived and thrived through severe climate changes, from ice-ages to heat waves. What can learn from the moss, so that we too might thrive within collapse. How can we enter into a dialogue with the moss? How can we co-create new spaces of emergence? Moss acts as one of the best air filtration systems in existence, consuming pollutants, carbon and fine dust particles and breathing out oxygen. In this work the moss is an active agent in both filtering the air and our personal reflections - creating a breathing space for human and non-human refuge.
Moving Space - is an audio guided walk taking us through the city between the two sites, shifting our view to a more-than-human perspective, reorienting our experience of the cityscape.
Resting Space - is a place for resting and dreaming of the future of this place, a field of native violets, an earth intervention. Viewers will be invited to rest in the patch of flowers. A space for resting, listening and considering future visions and imaginations of this place. Community will also be invited into a relationship of care, through a public planting process and invitation to water the flowers over the installation period.
Community members were invited to leave messages with the mosses through a digital platform here.
This work was is a site responsive artwork made collaboratively by various species of mosses, native violets and lead artist Merinda Davies and sound artist Mitch King.
Public programming delivered over the three months included: Planting the Flowers, a community planting event and a live listening/artist talk, pictured below.
After the temporary period of the installation this artwork was transferred and continues to grow in a living archive.
This artwork is growing on Widjabul/Wiabal land of the Bundjalung Nation and acknowledges their continuing deep connections to the many lands, water ways, seas and communities that make up this place. Always was, always will be.
This project is part of SITE LAB// Small Gestures Towards Infinity – a temporary public art commissioning project presented by Arts Northern Rivers and Lismore Regional Gallery. SITE LAB is supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW, with financial and in-kind support from Arts Northern Rivers and Lismore Regional Gallery.
Leave your memories and murmurings with the moss...
Mosses are ancient prehistoric beings, with histories dating back to 350 million years. Mosses have survived and thrived through severe climate changes - from ice ages to fires.
Mosses are agents in air filtration, cleansing our shared air, from dust, carbon and pollutants.
What can we learn from the mosses so that we too might thrive within collapse?
How can we enter into a dialogue with the moss?
How can we co-create new spaces of emergence?
Share a story with the mosses.
Tell the moss about your day.
Send a memory to the mosses.
Ask a question to the mosses.
Release your mossy melancholies...
“There is an ancient conversation going on between mosses and rocks, poetry to be sure. About light and shadow and the drift of continents. This is what has been called the "dialect of moss on stone - an interface of immensity and minute ness, of past and present, softness and hardness, stillness and vibrancy, yin and yan.”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses
Let the mosses digest your memories, your joys, your melancholies.
You are invited to consider how we might enter into a dialogue with other than human beings? To consider our collective human and non-human memories of place? To consider what we might learn from the mosses?
Moss acts as one of the best air filtration systems in existence, consuming pollutants, carbon and fine dust particles and breathing out oxygen. The moss is an active agent in both filtering the air and creating a breathing space where people can find some refuge.
These audio collections will be digested by the mosses and collaborators and made into a sound score that will form part of ‘Breathing Space, Moving Space, Resting Space’ an installation, opening as part of SITE LAB// Small Gestures Towards Infinity – a temporary public art commissioning project presented by Arts Northern Rivers and Lismore Regional Gallery in Lismore CBD, July to September 2023.
You can leave your message anonymously or with your name. The audio you leave will be treated with deep care and will only be used for the purpose of creating the ‘Breathing Space’ sound score.
This work is being made collaboratively by various species of mosses and humans Merinda Davies and Mitch King.
If you would like to stay up to date on this project stay in touch here
This artwork is growing on Widjabul/Wiabal land of the Bundjalung Nation and acknowledges their continuing deep connections to the many lands, water ways, seas and communities that make up this place. Always was, always will be.
This project is part of SITE LAB// Small Gestures Towards Infinity – a temporary public art commissioning project presented by Arts Northern Rivers and Lismore Regional Gallery. SITE LAB is supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW, with financial and in-kind support from Arts Northern Rivers and Lismore Regional Gallery..
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Moss acts as one of the best air filtration systems in existence, consuming pollutants, carbon and fine dust particles and breathing out oxygen. The moss is an active agent in both filtering the air and creating a breathing space where people can find some refuge.
These audio collections will be digested by the mosses and collaborators and made into a sound score that will form part of ‘Breathing Space, Moving Space, Resting Space’ an installation, opening as part of SITE LAB// Small Gestures Towards Infinity – a temporary public art commissioning project presented by Arts Northern Rivers and Lismore Regional Gallery in Lismore CBD, July to September 2023.
You can leave your message anonymously or with your name. The audio you leave will be treated with deep care and will only be used for the purpose of creating the ‘Breathing Space’ sound score.
This work is being made collaboratively by various species of mosses and humans Merinda Davies and Mitch King.
If you would like to stay up to date on this project stay in touch here
This artwork is growing on Widjabul/Wiabal land of the Bundjalung Nation and acknowledges their continuing deep connections to the many lands, water ways, seas and communities that make up this place. Always was, always will be.
This project is part of SITE LAB// Small Gestures Towards Infinity – a temporary public art commissioning project presented by Arts Northern Rivers and Lismore Regional Gallery. SITE LAB is supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW, with financial and in-kind support from Arts Northern Rivers and Lismore Regional Gallery..
Conversations with the Forest
Conversations with the Forest invites us to help grow a micro-forest in Surfers Paradise on Kombumerri land. Using plant species native to the region, the forest will become a ‘paradise’ people can enjoy in Surfers. A soundscape created for the forest will filter through speakers – tones and sounds similar to the electric pulse language of the trees. The work asks us to think about how we regard and communicate with forests and trees, and to consider a future where plants are our equals.
︎︎︎ Find out more ︎︎︎
This is a new work currently in development supported by GENERATE GC which is a City of Gold Coast initiative delivered in partnership with SITUATE Art in Festivals (Tas Dance), City of Gold Coast Regional Art Development Fund, Cavill Lane Surfers Paradise and Creative Partnerships Australia.
Collaborators
Merinda Davies - Lead artistJustine Dillon - Indigenous Ranger & Kombumerri Traditional Owner
Monica Gagliano - Researcher - plant bioacoustics and cognition
Lawrence English - Sound artist, mentor
Rebecca Ross & Generate GC/Situate Art in Festivals - Producer
Lemonade Letters to Art: Fully Automated Human Touch by Tulleah Pearce
‘Is it possible to discern if your food has been made with love? Or is automation capable of meeting all of our (tangible and intangible) dietary needs? Fully Automated Human Touch is a meditation on this question, and the artists’ own Turing Test.’
Link to full review: https://www.lemonadeletters.com.au/reviews/fully-automated-human-touch
‘Is it possible to discern if your food has been made with love? Or is automation capable of meeting all of our (tangible and intangible) dietary needs? Fully Automated Human Touch is a meditation on this question, and the artists’ own Turing Test.’
Link to full review: https://www.lemonadeletters.com.au/reviews/fully-automated-human-touch
Blank Street Press: Merinda Davies’ conversations with the forest
Gold Coast artist Merinda Davies has created a truly green piece of art: inviting the public to help grow a micro-forest in Surfers Paradise, on Kombumerri Country.
Using plant species native to the region, the forest will become a ‘paradise’ people can enjoy in the future. A soundscape created for the forest will filter through speakers, utilising tones and sounds similar to the electric pulse language of the trees.
Merinda Davies will be situated in the centre of Surfers Paradise in residency at Cavill Lane during the development of this first-of-a-kind artwork entitled ‘Conversations with the Forest’, where she will run a series of workshops, public talks and host an open studio where the community will be able to engage in the piece in progress.
We caught up with Merinda to find out more about the project.
Full Interview: https://www.blankstreetpress.com.au/arts/merinda-davies-conversations-with-the-forest
Gold Coast artist Merinda Davies has created a truly green piece of art: inviting the public to help grow a micro-forest in Surfers Paradise, on Kombumerri Country.
Using plant species native to the region, the forest will become a ‘paradise’ people can enjoy in the future. A soundscape created for the forest will filter through speakers, utilising tones and sounds similar to the electric pulse language of the trees.
Merinda Davies will be situated in the centre of Surfers Paradise in residency at Cavill Lane during the development of this first-of-a-kind artwork entitled ‘Conversations with the Forest’, where she will run a series of workshops, public talks and host an open studio where the community will be able to engage in the piece in progress.
We caught up with Merinda to find out more about the project.
Full Interview: https://www.blankstreetpress.com.au/arts/merinda-davies-conversations-with-the-forest
Merinda Davies, Imprints, 2020. Commissioned by IMA Brisbane for Making Art Work. Image: Marc PricopABC Arts: Australian artists respond to coronavirus isolation with works about connection.
Early on in the pandemic, Merinda Davies — a performance, installation and multimedia artist, based in Kombumerri country in South East Queensland — was forced to self-quarantine due to a case of the flu.
"I started writing down notes on how my body was feeling, not having any human touch with other people, and I realised that I really navigate my world through human connection to others," she says.
"Sometimes it's just someone putting their hand on my arm, or it's a hug with a friend, it's a hug with a family member, it's a hug with someone I haven't seen in a long time, or sometimes it's my yoga teacher resting their hand on me."
Full story by Hannah Reich: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-09-05/australian-art-covid-19-connection-isolation-connection/12620162
Interview for Pandemic Sensory Archive: www.archiveofintimacy.com/touch/
Paradiso Magazine Issue 14: Creativity in quarantine.
What is your take on our current world situation?
The current world situation has me thinking about death more regularly than usual, for me, it is a reminder to live life in a meaningful and authentic way. I feel like that sense, whether subconscious or conscious has been brought to the forefront for many people globally. In this time I’ve been doing a daily walk/pilgrimage along the foreshore –part meditation, part dreaming, part listening. On my walks, I am thinking about a post COVID-19 world where creativity and deep thought are at the core of solutions and a world where maybe constant production and the constant state of work, work, work, can shift to something softer.
Full story by Alex Mitcheson: https://www.thisisparadiso.com.au/read
Artwork Agency: Wild Walls
A performance artwork by Merinda Davies activated and linked the two exhibition spaces, drawing the audience into new and beautiful experiences inspired by the artist’s time in COVID-19 isolation.
Link to full blog by Artwork Agency: https://www.art-work.com.au/journal/wild-walls
Merinda (b.1991) is an artist using performance, movement, installation and conversation to ask how we might reorient ourselves towards deeper care and intimacy.
Her work is inspired by the environment, human and more-than-human social and ecological structures and the possibilities available to us in future imaginings. Her practice aims to find clarity and connection in the external world through deep listening, observation, and research into the emotional and physical states in our internal worlds. She grew up in Bundjalung Country, Northern NSW, and is currently living and creating on the land of the Yugambeh language group, in South East QLD.
Merinda's solo and collaborative work has most recently been commissioned by; Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane & Blue Mountains Cultural Centre (Imprints, 2020/2021), Outerspace (Umwelt Collective: m0ther.online, 2020), The Walls (Take your pleasure seriously, 2020, MIAMI/MIAMI international residency), Placemakers* GC (Fully Automated Human Touch, 2020) and City of Gold Coast (Conversations with the Forest, ongoing).
For project inquires, please use the contact form below.
Alternatively I love to send and receive letters in the post:
PO Box 78,
Miami, QLD, 4220
AUSTRALIA