Where Matter Breathes combines the practices of two Master of Visual Art and emerging artists from the Northern Rivers whose work explores the deep links between body, land, and spirit. Using sculptural forms, immersive installations, and transformative materials, Jenn Rowe and Jaimie Klum invite audiences into spaces where human experience and the natural world are closely connected. Working from uniquely different but complementary perspectives, Rowe and Klum explore how material, form, and environment shape identity, emotion and actions.
Rowe, a Trawlwoolway (Tasmania) artist of Anglo-Australian heritage, creates sculptural and assemblage works from what the land offers—driftwood, feathers, reeds, skeletal remains—transforming them into forms that echo animals, trees, rivers, and their spirits. Her works are a call to remember, protect, and return to a symbiotic relationship with Country. Klum’s interdisciplinary practice interrogates the shifting nature of the self through abstract sculpture and installation. Working intuitively with reclaimed industrial materials, sound, and projection, the work draws audiences into immersive sensory environments that engage with the unseen and unspoken landscapes of the human psyche.
Through the unexpected pairings of industrial and everyday materials, the artists' create tensions between seduction and unease, humour and vulnerability. These works invite viewers to become voyeurs into their own internal landscapes, where memory, desire, and the unconscious quietly shape our ways of being in the world.