My name is Ben Beeton. I have done over 20 artist residency projects in Australia and abroad focusing on regions ecology, geology and deep time history. I have traveled widely through Europe, SouthEast Asia, China and New Zealand. Scroll Down to view highlighted works. To view a list of my projects in go to https://sciart.com.au/projects/
Exhibition at Wintjiri Arts and Museum at Uluru 1st – 30th of April. I was asked by the director of the galleries to create and arts meets science exhibition at Voyages Resort to run during the Tjungu Festival and the commencement of Bruce Munro’s Field of Light. The residency lasted for four months. Here is a flier from the exhibition.
I designed and then painted this work with local Uluru artist Heather Duff. Supported by my extensive research into the deep time history of the region the painting tells the epic story of the parallel histories of Uluru and life on Earth over 600 million years. It shows what Uluru looks like under the sand. It is also a portrait of my father Associate Professor Robert Beeton who has been a key advisor to many different federal environment ministers over the years.
I created this animation based on a selected extinct and endangered species in Australia. I have been invited by CSIRO scientists to work with them in preparing a presentation for the Moreton Bay & Catchment Forum to be held at the University of Queensland St Lucia from the 1st to the 3rd of November 2016. During my talk at the forum I will use a similar animated presentation to communicate the health of the natural systems of the Moreton Bay region.
I designed “The 9th Level” to show people where our species could be located in the Tree of Life, what the biomass of our species looked like over 15,000 years and how I model families in the four dimensional world of the Tree of Life. In the work I feature Charles Darwin’s original drawing of the Tree of Life and Carl Linnaeus’s system of naming organisms called binomial nomenclature. To Linnaeus’s 8 levels I have embedded genealogical data into the Tree of Life which I called the 9th level that I believe completes the system. Using my designs I can offer family tree sculptures as unique works of art and I am now working with Urban Art Projects with the objective of turning the DNA Attachment Motif into a large scale public artwork with LED lighting.
The sandstone base of the sculpture titled “The Ninth Level” is a model of 300 million years of the biomass fluctuations of animals. Below is a model I created which shows 600 million year of the biomass fluctuations of animal life. The different colours are the different periods of geological time. I have also based an animated flight through the Tree of Life on this model.
Creating this sculpture required myself and a collaborator Ben Price to research many papers on plate tectonics in order to create a diagram which showed how the continents had moved in relation to each other over two thousand million years. It also shows a the predicted formation of the supercontinent Amasia.
This is a unique painting where I worked with indigenous artists at Uluru. The painting merges science with traditional stories about the land. The science maps out two billion years of plate tectonics. Each coloured line is a different continent moving across the planet over 2 billion years. The traditional stories told through the dot painting are from Tjukurpa which is the foundation of Anangu life and society. It has many complex but complementary meanings. I have been told no one has attempted to merge science with traditional perspectives through art like this before. The work now hangs at the art and science museum at Uluru. I do believe there is scope for a larger project along these lines which looks at different locations in Australia.
These flags are designed for 3d printing. They are a collaborative work with engineer Sam MacFarlane. They use a DNA Helix Attachment motif which I designed as a means of connecting bodies. Created this month you are looking at hundreds of parents with their newly born children modeled in four dimensions. There is scope to do flags of the world in this way. The DNA model is part of a large project where by using scientific data I have modeled the Tree of Life in a very different way to the well known models. I have animations, sculptures, drawing and paintings on the project. Currently I have been working with UAP on pricing public art based on my models for a specific site in the Northern Territory.
In 2015 I was invited to speak at the 15th Conference on Australasian Vertebrate Evolution, Palaeontology and Systematics (CAVEPS). CAVEPS is a biennial meeting of palaeontologists and evolutionary biologists from around the world which in 2015 was held in Alice Springs. Through the talk the director of the Alice Springs Desert Park came to hear of me and invited me to do an artist residency at the park. I created an interactive display for the parks cinema. Alice Springs Desert Park Artist Residency
My artist residency at Rovers Rest near Girraween was a short term project for one week. The trees at Rovers Rest are truly remarkable and inspired me to create the work below. The Stanthorpe Granite was originally a molten mass of magma that rose up and pushed into the older rocks surrounding it, about 240 million years ago which places them in the Triassic period along with the Sydney sandstone.
El Nido Resort (Philippines) Commission work. This job came out of work I was doing at the Ecosciences Precinct in Brisbane. I used the artwork as the foundation for the first interactive artwork which I presented during National Science week with CSIRO scientist Dr David Brewer (as seen below). I also was invited to speak at the Conference on Australasian Vertebrate Evolution, Palaeontology and Systematics. At the conference I spoke about art as scientific model making and the fusion between traditional and new media.
Ecosciences Precinct Artist Residency. This work looks at coal seam gas mining on the Darling Downs
After creating this model I gave it to a craft artist to weave out of weeds.
Naracoorte Caves world heritage fossil site artist residency. Below we see of photo of the work installed with myself and the director of the park.
Driving Creek Railway Artist Residency New Zealand
Castle Rock, Coromandel NZ
Daintree Study
Dendroid behaviour during species evolution through time following Daniel C Dennett – Darwin’s Dangerous Idea
Menindee Lakes
Dunmoochin Artist Residency. It was during my residency at Clifton Pugh’s property that I finally was able to solve the riddle of attachment.
Bundanon Artist Residency
Hill End Artist Residency
Lake Mungo
Fowlers Gap Artist Residency
Lake Eyre Residency
Broken Hill Artist Residency
The long term painting project 10 Billion Years on a Flat Surface.
Life As Liquid Drawings. These drawings were created when I was trying to understand the internal structure of the Tree of Life. I had read A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, by Deleuze and Guattari and applied it to the Tree of Life.
Crows Nest Falls Geology. This was a work I was commissioned to create about the history of Crows Nest Falls.
Marine Systems over 600 Million Years. This work looked at the history of the Crinoids, Ammonites and Trilobites.
Boyce Gardens Artist Residency. This work is now in the Australian Embassy in Washington.
Gondwana Rifting
Kimberly Studies with Australian Geographic
Bundanon study
In 2010 I was invited to be the artist for the Royal Society of Victoria’s Burke and Wills Environmental Expedition I was required to create postcard images of all the places that the expedition visited whilst traveling from Melbourne to the Gulf of Carpentaria in the footsteps of Burke and Wills. The expedition visited several places per day. The postcards were required to reference the environmental issues at each location. It was a great experience although not the way I would usually conduct an art making project. Jack Thompson was our patron.
Sketch of the Dig Tree
Epidemic Conception and its Threat to the Potential of Mind. This work was about addressing the riddle of attachment. I was unable to find the solution. It’s over 2 meters in length.
Atherton Tablelands Lake Echim
Lamington National Park
Lake Mungo
Binna Burra
Heath landscapes
Nothofagus Gondwanan Connections
