Itamar Freed and Courtney Scheu
INTERDISCIPLINARY Collaboration- dance, visual art, film, sculpture
Horizon Festival Final Call Exhibition
Floating Tree (on thin lines) Image by Timothy Birch
Floating Tree (on thin lines) Image by Timothy Birch
Itamar Freed and Courtney Scheu work at the intersection of visual art and contemporary dance. They have established a collaborative practice based on a shared interest in engaging with nature and the environment. Their work attempts to dissolve the boundaries between nature and culture, and the real and the unreal.
Floating tree (on thin lines) comprises found pieces of dead wood from many different trees. Painstakingly, Freed and Scheu have reconstituted a tree from the broken fragments and suspended it, so it appears to be levitating diagonally above the ground—somewhere between rising and falling, in limbo between life and death. Each part of the tree contains its own stories, memories and experiences of time and place. Gathered in this way, the work considers how trees communicate and cooperate with each other to form a collective memory.
Freed and Scheu are concerned with disappearing habitats, rising sea levels, and how technology is blurring the lines between the digital world and reality. The structure of the work is reminiscent of an artefact that has been excavated and pieced together for display in a museum. This tree never existed but nonetheless, the artists have conjured it into being. Part post-apocalyptic monument, part extreme act of care, Floating tree (on thin lines) explores what is at stake and how we can attempt to reconcile the impacts of human intervention in the landscape.
Curator Megan Williams
Producer Amie Moffat
Image by Sarah Michelle Rupert
Other projects
AIRIE Fragile - Portrait as Everglades. Image by Steven Brooke
Crows Nest Artists in Residence Creative Spaces 2020
Through the support of Sunshine Coast Council and Arts Queensland through the Regional Arts Development Fund, Freed and Scheu spent 3 months in residence on Chambers Island. They conducted a project where they would invite local residents to come to the “Casting Couch”. Freed and Scheu would then cast the faces of local creating a sculptural time capsule. Additionally, they conducted experiments with a drawing robot and AI.
THE REGIONAL ARTS DEVELOPMENT FUND (RADF) IS A PARTNERSHIP BETWEEN THE QUEENSLAND GOVERNMENT AND SUNSHINE COAST COUNCIL TO SUPPORT LOCAL ARTS AND CULTURE IN REGIONAL QUEENSLAND.
AIRIE Artist in Residence in Everglades April 2019
Freed and Scheu were AIRIE Residents in the UNESCO World Heritage Listed National Park, Florida, USA. Across the period of a month they lived in the park experiencing the beauty and learning about this unique wilderness environment. Spending time with biologists, hydrologists, park rangers, python hunters and locals, Freed and Scheu collated their experiences into creative work that included a photographic library, hydraulic sculpture, portrait series and dance films.