Dr Amanda Stuart

Amanda Stuart is a Canberra based visual artist with a deep love of Country, music and story.

Her sculptural practice produces objects that sit in the the environment to invite the psychic re-imaginings of old, unhealed wounds between humans and unwanted animals. Embedded in a materiality of  Australian regional terrains and fauna, her works refer to the social, cultural and political difficulties surrounding estranged human-animal relations, in contested environments. Amanda's practice embraces drawing, object making, installation and insitu photographic documentation.

A past degree in land management and work as a park ranger profoundly informs her ongoing understanding of white settler/colonizing relations within Australia. Increasingly her art practice embraces cross-cultural/interdisciplinary themes and strives to acknowledge First People's inherent and deep relationships to Country. Amanda has active engagement with museum collections and in the re-imagining of objects and stories that they hold.

Alongside collaborative projects, group and solo exhibitions, Amanda has produced two large public commissions that evolved from her field based research into wild dog/dingo communities in southeastern Australia (bush pack, Civic, Canberra (2011) and nil tenure, Goulburn, (2017). Her work thylacine tryptich (responding to the Charles Selby thylacine pelt as a once sentient and vividly alive being) was acquired by the National Museum of Australia in 2015.

Amanda currently lectures in the Environment Studio and Foundation Workshops at the SOAD and is co-founder and convenor/lecturer for the Balawan Elective, which was the recipient of the Vice Chancellor's Award for Reconciliation in 2018.

PhD Visual Art (Sculpture) ANUSOAD; Bachelor of Visual Arts (1stClass Hons) ANUSOAD ; Ass Dip (Arts Studies), LSAD; Bach Science, Macquarie University

• Australian environmental/ecological/cross-cultural concerns
• Contested landscapes/social justice practices in visual arts
• Interdisciplinary studies
• Decolonisation theory
• Human/non-human animal relations
• Field based research/transformative pedagogy