In April 2024, SAM Selects artist Jen Valender joined SAM Curator – Community Caroline Esbenshade for a fascinating live conversation exploring the creation of her exhibition Field. Created during Valender’s time on the University of Melbourne’s Dookie Agricultural Campus for her CoVA Art + Ecology residency, the body of moving image works explore the relationship between art and the natural world through a series of video works featuring the wildlife and lush, fluorescent canola fields of Dookie.
In this episode, the pair discuss working with animals, performance art, and connecting with farm life.
Field was on display in SAM’s Hugh D.T Williamson Community Gallery from 3 February to 5 May 2024.
About Jen Valender
Jen Valender is a multidisciplinary artist who creates performative encounters on and with the landscape that raises questions about the relationship between art and the natural world.
Through moving image, she explores the ways in which art may be used as a navigational tool to investigate human and nonhuman connections. Valender has exhibited widely in galleries and museums in Australia, France, Germany, South Africa, and Portugal and holds a Master of Fine Arts (Research) from the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne.