Art Forum with Donald Fortescue

Curious Objects - Crafting connections to the natural world

Donald Fortescue is an artist and educator working in lutruwita/Tasmania and the San Francisco Bay Area in the USA. He crafts objects and situations that allow us to glimpse deeper connections with the natural world. He will share the evolution of his practice - starting with a life changing residency at UTAS 25 years ago and leading though to recent work in the Arctic, the Antarctic and the Mediterranean Sea. 

Donald Fortescue is an artist, writer, and educator. He is a professor of art and design at the California College of the Arts (CCA) in San Francisco and lives and works in Oakland, California and lutruwita/Tasmania, Australia. He was born in Sydney, Australia, where he studied zoology and botany for his first degree and worked as a botanical consultant and scientific illustrator for many years. His love of making led him to further studies in design at the Australian National University and then to a Masters degree in Sculpture at the University of Wollongong. He moved to the US in 1997 to teach and be a program chair at CCA. He has exhibited in Australia, the US, Europe, Asia and South America. He received the Experimental Design Award from San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art in 2001 and his work is in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Australia, the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, the Houston Museum of Fine Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and other institutions. 

Donald creates sculptural ‘instruments’, installations, video, sound works and images which reframe our view of the world. He is interested in revealing energies and events which are beyond our usual perception together with the human experiences and histories which underlie our understanding of the natural world. He employs a wide range of contemporary digital technologies such as modified photographic images, video, recorded and treated sound and digital modeling and fabrication. These are used in tandem with craft-based techniques from contemporary studio craft, sculpture, seafaring, musical instrument making, and the histories of scientific discovery (including cabinet making, whittling, scrimshandering, scientific illustration, stereoscopy and the fabrication of instruments of collection, recording and display). His work highlights the rich history of human engagement with the natural world and our evolving efforts to find our place within it. 

This forum will be presented live at the Dechaineux LT on the Hunter Street Campus and streamed to the Inveresk Campus, Library, room 216.  If you are unable to attend in person at either campus please join us via Zoom, Meeting ID: 873 4454 6792  

Website - http://www.donaldfortescue.com 

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/donaldfortescue/ 

Image provided by artist