Dr Amanda Stuart

Amanda Stuart is a Canberra based visual artist and art educator with a deep love of Country, music and writing.

Her sculptural works produce objects that sit in the environment to invite psychic re-imaginings of old, unhealed wounds between humans and unwanted animals. Embedded in a materiality of the Australian regional landscape and its fauna, her works often refer to the social, cultural, ethical and political difficulties surrounding estranged human animal relations within contested landscapes. Stuart’s practice embraces drawing, installation, object making and in-situ photographic documentation.

Stuart has a PhD in Visual Arts (Sculpture) and a Bachelor of Science (Land Management) – the latter of which profoundly informs her understanding of white settler colonizing relationships to the land. Increasingly, her art practice embraces cross-cultural and interdisciplinary strategies and acknowledges our First People's inherent relationships with Country. She also has a strong interest in active engagement with museum collections and re-imaging objects and the stories they hold. Stuart has produced two major public commissions that evolved from field research into wild dog/dingo and human communities in south-eastern Australia (bush pack Civic, Canberra 2011 and nil tenure, Goulburn 2017) and her work thylacine triptych (which responded to the Charles Thelby Thylacine Pelt) was acquired by the National Museum of Australia in 2015.

Amanda currently lectures in the Environment Studio and Foundation workshops at ANU School of Art & Design and is a co-founder and convener/lecturer for the Balawan Elective, which was the recipient of the Vice Chancellor's Award for Reconciliation in 2018.