A common Sydney mangrove snail has been recently named by taxonomist Rosemary Golding after the shape of it’s phallus, which as it’s name says, looks like a medusa head.

My question when I look at this images under the electronic microscope is: Why so much complexity???

Specimen from the collection of the Australian Museum, microscopist Sue Lindsday

Installation shots at ARC One Gallery in Melbourne 2011

2009 
Work in progress. In collaboration with Ross Rudesch Harley.

This video is to be viewed vertically. Mimicry is not only about looks but about behaviour. Stick insects, like a real branch, only move unless there is air movement around them. It takes patience to watch this video.

2009
In collaboration with Ross Rudesch Harley. HD mono channel video.
Juvenile stick insects mimic the movement of a branch as if moved by wind, all while hanging up in the air from a metal rod.

3 min colour video DVD, co-directed by Ross Rudesch Harley and Maria Fernanda Cardoso

The video depicts a parade of animal faces, a procession of anonymous identities. However, each close-up reveals the fascinating peculiarity of their faces – the chickens with their crests like genitalia, the fish that appear to laugh, the bat that looks like a cat. Under the gaze of the camera lens, these animals appear to take on human characteristics. Seductiveness intermingles with repugnance, subtle irony with satire and brutality with menace. This fusion of opposites permeates much of the artist’s work.

A 2007 TV magazine segment about Maria Fernanda Cardoso, her background, development as an artist and involvement in a major exhibition of Latin-American art at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, Australia.

Produced by the Australian Broadcasting Commission’s Sunday Arts program, and used with permission of the producer.

These images are a colalboration between Ross Rudesch Harley, myself, and the astronomical photographs of Felipe Rodriguez.

1998
5 min colour video, 1998 by Ross Rudesch Harley

This is the video documentation of a live show of the Cardoso Flea Circus at the Tipi at the Pompidou Center in Paris, as part of the Paris quartier d’ete festival.

2002

This is the tent and video installation touring with the exhibition Material World: 25 years of the Fabric Workshop and Museum. Installation view at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia.

1997
8 min colour video, co-directed by Ross Rudesch Harley and Maria Fernanda Cardoso to accompany the Cardoso Flea Circus tent installation produced by the Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philladelphia.

These are real live perfoming fleas, with Cardoso performing as Queen of the Fleas.

Cardoso Flea Circus Installation, including video installation, tent, arena, props, audio works, DVD compilation (colour video, duration variable), purchased by the Tate Gallery London in 2007.

2008
Video by Ross Rudesch Harley and Maria Fernanda Cardoso

This video installation at Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre documented emu feather outfits made by Maria Fernanda Cardoso and worn by a professional model.

Part performance, part fashion, part “animal-morphism”, this video sits side by side with the racks of emu wear and wall pieces on display at the Museum.

From their website:
Australian

Casula Powerhouse commissioned Australia’s hottest contemporary visual artists to transform the newly refurbished arts centre into a spectacle of colour, texture and movement. Combined, the artists have 40 biennales between them, and are among the most exciting practitioners today. The exhibition features 12 new works, in a variety of mediums including sculpture, painting, installation and textiles.

Like most Australians the artists have cultural and family ties in other places and it is this which informs their work. Australian celebrates the complexity that makes this country such an interesting place to live and presents some of the freshest and most dynamic work being created in this country today.

Curator
Nicholas Tsoutas
Assistant Curator
Brianna Munting

Artists
Maria Fernanda Cardoso collaborating with Ross Rudesch Harley, Sean Cordeiro and Claire Healy, Shaun Gladwell, David Griggs, Gordon Hookey, Dani Marti, Raquel Ormella, Nike Savvas and Stephen Little, Sardar Sinjawi, Suzann Victor, Savanhdary Vongpoothorn collaborating with Richard Johnson and Guan Wei

2002

I have sheared hundreds of Corriedale sheepskins in geometrical patterns (lines, squares), working in a shearing shed at Gundowringa, a sheep farm in New South Wales, Australia. I came there to hire a professional Shearer, but not finding one available, took upon me the learning of such male traditional Australian skill.

The smell of more than a hundred years of sheep faeces and urine, plus the sweet smell of the lanolin of the wool, provided the atmosphere I walked into every day to work 12 hour a day for weeks of continuous shearing. I am an expert now, and practiced on my first live sheep towards the end of my stay at Gundowringa.

I dyed the sheepskins in earthly and warm colours, to create an orange mural, a yellow mural, and a deep red mural. They look a little bit absurd, with a material as amorphous as wool taking on stripe and square designs.

There are a lot of similarities between Australian and Latin American countries like Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, which relied on cattle and sheep as a main source of wealth and job creation in the countryside. But the wool market has been shrinking steadily for decades now (replaced by artificial fibres), leaving a void of unemployment and despair in the countryside.

2002
4 min colour video DVD, by Ross Rudesch Harley
Video documentation of the process of making the SHEEP series by Maria Fernanda Cardoso, filmed in a 100 year old shearing shed near Goulborn, NSW Australia.

2003
One channel colour video
by Ross Rudesch Harley
3 min.
Video stills at the shearing shed of sheep farm Gundworinga, Australia.