Meet our Seedpod Artist // Bianca Tainsh

Who are you and what do you create?
I am an artist who creates social projects and transformative experiences. My methodology for life and artmaking are quite similar. I have even created an ideology to live by through one of my projects. And perhaps that’s the best thing I can share to describe who I am and what I create.

BLUEPRINT FOR BEING – Bianca Tainsh

• Use my creative aptitude to subvert systems of control and transcend banality.
• Never let wealth and the constructs of Mass Consumerism dictate my decisions and my happiness. Money is a tool, not an ideal.
• Always search for the next conceptual leap.
• Always remember there is an inner self waiting behind every façade.
• Guide with respect.
• Wherever possible, boycott plastic. Plastic is shit for everything.
• Art can be a universal communicator for generating empathy and stimulating reflection. Use it well.
• Humour, even when undetected is always worth it.
• Never assume. 
• Keep caring, no matter what.
• Inspire, enthral, provoke. The world needs saving, and only a united humanity can do it.
• Always go back to nature. That’s where the answers can be found.

What materials and techniques do you use to bring your work to life?
Vigorous research is my most fundamental technique. It lends substance to my ideas, and creates an archive of media and knowledge pilfered from sources as diverse as pop culture to science journals.  From this collection I create works that are an eccentric merging of images, data and ideas, imbued with political and metaphysical undertones. The individual works are created as parts of a larger installation, but as they carry their own message they can also exist on their own.  

With a focus on expressing a concept each work may materialise from a diversity of media and forms. Much of my work is digital – video, paper and fabric prints, books – but I also create assemblage works that act as props or platforms for situations – workstations, social spaces, alters, costumes.  Each work serves a purpose, or at least suggests an agenda.  Wherever possible I use ethical, salvaged or sustainable materials and production methods, which is an extension of my life methodology as a mindful global citizen.

What kind of inspirations go into your work?
My work ultimately aspires to social transformation, and creating experiential spaces that are generous to an audience, but also intriguing. My most recent projects have all sat under the umbrella of my long-term venture The League for Human Integrity, launched in Berlin, 2018. In response to a global mood of disillusion prompted by right-wing power swings, climate change, and corporatisation, the project aspires to ‘ideological reinvention in the age of Mass Consumerism’.

As far as projects go, Integrity endeavours to paramount social transformation, a prerequisite of all movements. During the research for this project I looked at past ideological movements, but I was also looking for a structure in nature that might represent the idea of a connected humanity. As a profuse drawer of living organisms, and the founder of the movement The German Monist League, Ernst Haeckel popped up on my radar more than once. Haeckel was a nature scientist during the turn of the twentieth century, and it was one of his observational drawings of a protist that inspired the insignia for Integrity. His philosophy that every organism was important to the whole was also an enlightening metaphor that resonated with Integrity’s ambition for human equity, and the significance of each individual and creature that shares our Earth. In this way you can imagine that every individual plays a role in the health of the planet.

What are five words you would use to describe live art to someone unfamiliar with the art form?
Responsive
Kinetic
Spacial
Evocative
Connective

What excites you most about your Seedpod Pilot residency?
How to create compelling work that effectively communicates your ideas and intrigues audiences? Working in isolation most definitely impedes these aspects of creative development. What excites me most about the Seedpod Pilot residency is the critical and engaging framework it offers.

Situated in the now defunct Maroochydore Courthouse Lock-up, my residency will be adjacent to a scenic, but urban thoroughfare, allowing a direct link for public connection.  To maximise this opportunity I will invite the opinions of passers-by on the topics that my project explores, and establish a meaningful dialogue with them. The Lock-up is also the space where I will be testing the outcomes of my residency through two public performances in February. It is an intimate space with a history of human experience seared into the very fabric of the building, an atmosphere that will introduce another layer to the work. 

Most vitally, I will be working with a dynamic team who will be supporting my project on so many levels.  I am particularly looking forward to the critical conversation that I will share with Jude Anderson, my mentor. Jude is an aspirational figure for what I desire for my own practice. I know that in her hands I will be safe in being challenged to disengage from the traditional boundaries of arts practice.

A recent shift from presenting work in the gallery to activating public spaces has also complicated the organisational aspects of my projects, creating the need for new skills and knowledge. In this way the production support of the Horizon Festival team will free the project to grow organically, and reach its full potential as the transformative work I anticipate it to be.