Dr Keith Armstrong

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PhD (Queensland University of Technology)

Background:

Keith Armstrong is currently a Senior Lecturer in QUT Visual Arts (part time), researcher at the Institute for Future Environments' Environment Research Group, and a Senior Research Fellow, University Free State, Centre For Development Support, South Africa. He was formerly Associate Director of the QUT Creative Lab Research Centre (2016-18) and a Senior Research Fellow in media arts for 12 years. He is also an actively practising and exhibiting freelance new media artist, beginning in 1992. His archive of creative works can be found here.

Research Interests: 

Keith Armstrong is an experimental artist profoundly motivated by issues of social and ecological justice. He has specialised for 19 years in practice-led collaborative, hybrid, new media art with an emphasis on:

  • art-life sciences collaborations
  • ecological art practices
  • socio-political art praxis
  • art-international development collaborations
  • innovative performance forms
  • site-specific electronic arts
  • networked interactive installations
  • alternative interfaces
  • public arts practices

Keith’s research asks how insights drawn from scientific and philosophical ecologies can help us to better invent and direct experimental art forms, in the understanding that art practitioners are powerful change agents, provocateurs and social catalysts. Through inventing radical research methodologies and processes he has led and created over sixty major art works and process-based projects, which have been shown extensively in Australia and overseas, supported by numerous grants from the public and private sectors. He was formerly:

  • Australia Council New Media Arts Fellow
  • Doctoral and Postdoctoral New Media Fellow at QUT's Creative Industries Faculty
  • lead researcher at the ACID Australasian CRC for Interaction Design

Publications:

Research highlights:

His interdisciplinary work Intimate Transactions received an Honorary Mention in the 2005 Prix Ars Electronica in Austria, represented Australia at the National Gallery of China for 'Media Art China' (Synthetic Times) during the 2008 Olympics Cultural Festival and was shown in 22 venues including the ICA London and in 2010 was acquired for the permanent media art history collection of ZKM Centre for Art and Media, Karlsruhe Germany. Keith's interactive installation, Shifting Intimacies, developed during an Arts Council England residency, was premiered at the ICA, London. His interactive installation Knowmore (House of Commons) was shown at the Mediations Biennial in Poland in 2010. In 2011-12 he directed the 'Remnant Emergency' Artlab project in Australia, New Zealand and India with outcomes including the high profile Bat-Human Project in Sydney. His work Finitude was featured in the 3rd Art and Science International Exhibition and Symposium,Beijing, China at the China National Museum of Science and Technology. Recent works Night Rage and Long Time, No See? featured in ISEA 2013 Sydney and in 2014 Light of Extinction was featured in Thingworld:International Triennial of New Media Art at the National Gallery of Art in Beijing, China.

Through 2011-15 he forged new collaborative partnerships with a range of biodiversity conservation organisations and ecologists across the Australian continent. This has resulted in a series of major commissions for works, including Sydney Powerhouse Museum, the Queensland Museum, Media Art China and Siteworks Festival at Arthur Boyd’s property, Bundanon. In 2016 he presented a major solo show of five new works in Sydney at UTS Gallery - the Over|Many|Horizons project - collaborating with an international team of marine scientists, climatologists and cultural activists, began to develop a Twitter-focused work with a national environmental organization that images ‘flows of contagious ideas’, and travelled to South Africa to instigate a socially-engaged project around sustainability and poverty reduction called ‘Re-Future', funded by the prestigious Andrew Mellon Foundation. In 2016 he presented a major exhibition of five major works called Over|Many|Horizons at UTS art Gallery in Sydney,a project developed with an international team of marine scientists, climatologists and cultural activists. He also instigated his socially-engaged project called ‘Re-Future’ in South Africa (2017-18), funded by the Mellon Foundation, which embedded contemporary artists within solution driven teams working to alleviate poverty and housing affordability within the shadow of anthropogenic climate change. In 2017 he exhibited his art/science work Eremocene (Age of Loneliness) at the prestigious Ars Electronica Festival in Linz Austria and Experimenta Make Sense: International Triennial at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne. In 2018 his exhibition Change Agent was the focal show of ISEA 2018, at Durban Art Gallery, South Africa, and his works Staging Change were featured in the Vrystaat Kunstefees International Arts Festival. In 2019 his new work Elegy for Life, Anthem for Artifice was curated in the 5th International Art and Science Exhibition and Symposium: The Integration of Art and Science in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, at the National Museum of China.

Following a forced break in exhibiting due to COVID, In 2022 he was the installation artist for the large-scale collaborative artwork Uramat Mugas showcased for the Asia Pacific Triennial (APT10), Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA), Brisbane. In 2022-3 he will present a large scale networked art6work throughout Queensland, Australia called Carbon Dating that fosters a community of care aound the sustencance of native gasses and grasslands.

View Complete Resume

Projects (Chief investigator)

Projects

Additional information

Experience

Awards

Type
Publicly commissioned Artworks
Reference year
2021
Details
A commissioned major 4-year international collaboration inspired by ceremonial practices of the Papua New Guinean Uramat clan for 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT10), initiated by QAGOMA in conversation with the late Gideon Kakabin & Indigenous Uramat Identity chair, Lazarus Eposia in 2016. The clan presented QAGOMA with 70 Uramat objects in 2018 including Qawat (Kavat) fire dance & daytime (Madaska) masks. In 2018 I was invited to work with QAGOMA, Eposia¿s clan group & PNG filmmakers as installation artist & visual director ¿ ultimately an extensive 4-year exhibition design role - leading methods of image presentation & undertaking all image production. Our team worked consistently with the clan to decolonise our approach to display, notably of the fire dance masks, consistent with Uramat tradition, practice & cosmology. The work premiered at APT10 in Dec. 2021 and runs till April 2022.
Type
Publicly commissioned Artworks
Reference year
2019
Details
Curated/invited exhibition of 'Elegy for Life, Anthem for Artifice', National Museum of China, Nov 1-31, 2019.
Type
Publicly commissioned Artworks
Reference year
2018
Details
The Re-Future Project/Seven Stage Futures, with Qala Phelang Tala/University Free State - Centre for Development Studies/PIAD Program/Vrystaat Kunstefees/Arts Festival/Tsa-Botjhaba, South Africa, 18-22 July, 2017Festival Events (community 'merakas')1: Caleb Motshabi Township, Stand 921, Bloemfontein, South Africa, 18 July, 12.00-18.302: Caleb Motshabi Township, Ipopeng Street, Bloemfontein, South Africa,19 July 2017, 13.00-18.303: 129 Vlei Ave, Roodewaal, Bloemfontein, South Africa, 22 July, 10.00-18.30
Type
Publicly commissioned Artworks
Reference year
2018
Details
Change Agent (Regenerative Futures): Lead, curated exhibition for the International Symposium for Electronic Arts, ISEA 2018, Durban Art Gallery, Durban, South Africa, 23-30 June, 2018
Type
Publicly commissioned Artworks
Reference year
2018
Details
Experimenta, Make Sense, International Triennial, 2017-20, RMIT Gallery, 344 Swanson St, Melbourne, Oct 2-Nov 11, Curated by Jonathan Parsons and Lubi Thomas. Reviewed, Gye, Lisa, Experimenta: Make Sense: The art of perceptual play, in Realtime Journal, Oct, 2017.
Type
Publicly commissioned Artworks
Reference year
2017
Details
Eremocene (Age of Loneliness), Ars Electronica Festival, curated program, 2017, (AI Artificial Intelligence, The Other and I), PostCity, Linz, Austria, Sept 7-11, 2017. Curated by Gerfried Stocker and Horst Hoertner. Funded by Australia Council for the Arts, $21,250 and Ars Electronica Futurelab.
Type
Visiting Professorships/Fellowships
Reference year
2017
Details
Visiting Senior Research Fellow, Project Re-Future, University of the Free State, Centre For Development Studies, South Africa, in association with Qala Phelang Tala/PIAD Program/Vrystaat Kunstefees/Arts Festival/Tsa-Botjhaba, funded by the Andrew Mellon Foundation.
Type
Publicly commissioned Artworks
Reference year
2014
Details
Light of Extinction, National Art Gallery of China, Curated by Zhang Ga and Kim Machan, June 11th - July 9th, 2014.http://embodiedmedia.com/homeartworks/light-of-extinctionhttp://mediartchina.org/exhibitions/ensemble¿parliament-of-things/light-of-extinction-au/Review in Artlink Journal: http://embodiedmedia.com/resource_files/Artlink%20LOI%20Review073.pdfProduction Grant, Light of Extinction, For National Museum China, Beijing, $5,000 (secured by MAAP) and Australia Council Creative Australia Award.
Type
Funding Award
Reference year
2013
Details
Australia Council, Inter Arts, Creative Australia - Production and Presentation- Night Fall: a series of 'Seasonal' media artworks, exploring the 'extinction of human experience', Stage 2, Awarded Amount: $80,000
Type
Visiting Professorships/Fellowships
Reference year
2012
Details
ANAT Synapse Art-Science Residency, with the Australian Wildlife Conservancy, $31,000: The Re-introduction project.

Publications

Current Supervisions

  • Precarious Smellscapes - Deepening our olfactory understanding of slow violence; sustaining human and morethan-human futures.
    MPhil, Principal Supervisor
    Other supervisors: Professor Jennifer Firn
  • Developing artist-honeybee collaborations to promote public discourse around sustaining futures
    MPhil, Principal Supervisor
    Other supervisors: Dr Rachael Haynes

Completed Supervisions (Doctorate)

Completed Supervisions (Masters by Research)