Miranda Bellamy and Amanda Fauteux | Collective

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Miranda Bellamy and Amanda Fauteux, “Collective,” 2023

digital c type print (courtesy of the gallery)

Miranda Bellamy and Amanda Fauteux’s collaborative practice identifies and extends the stories of plants through site-specific research and experimentation. By listening and responding to plants, they make space for the critical revision of settler-colonial histories, reflect on material accountability, reciprocity and ways of seeing.

Collective has been a process of accumulation. Over several years and across many seemingly disparate locations, Bellamy and Fauteux have met with and photographed hundreds of marked trees. In this exhibition, varied etched or painted traces on numerous trees are emphasized, however, the authors of these marks are absent. We are left to wonder who is responsible for these marks, and why? Is it a secret code? An expression? What kind of message is this?

The trees and their marks tell us stories of loss, trauma, healing, renewal, cooperation and guardianship. These stories speak to the immediacy of a moment, where bio systems strain under intersecting crises. Bellamy and Fauteux’s work considers how we might approach our relationship with trees through a new lens and to recognize the significance of our inter connectedness, honouring the autonomy of trees as living beings.