Merinda Davies

SITE LAB Artwork

Merinda Davies ‘Breathing Space, Moving Space, Resting Space ’ 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 non-human. You are invited to leave memories and messages with moss which will be digested into an audio score. Moss 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. 

About the artist – 

Merinda Davies (b.1991) is an artist using performance, movement, installation, text 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 Kombumerri Country, in South East QLD.

Merinda’s solo and collaborative work has most recently been commissioned by; HOTA, Home of the Arts, Metro Arts, ANAT – SPECTRAvision, Performance Space – Liveworks Festival, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, Blue Mountains Cultural Centre, Outerspace and The Walls. She is currently an artist in Generate GC, an initiative between City of Gold Coast and Situate Art in Festivals.