Epiphytes

An epiphyte is an organism that lives on the surface of a plant, feeding on the air, water and natural refuse of its environment, in harmony with its surrounding ecosystem. Tully Arnot’s virtual reality work Epiphytes honours alternative forms of plant communication and consciousness, inviting us to question our own perception. The primacy of sight is minimised in favour of sound and scent, which Arnot uses to influence our bodily responses within the virtual space. Epiphytes reflects Arnot’s interest in how emergent technologies help form human understandings of the world.

Situated within an abstracted representation of Arnot’s childhood backyard, the environment features a diffuse, shifting, magenta palette - suggestive of a phytomorphic (plant-based) interpretation of light and space. The work includes interviews with evolutionary ecologist Monica Gagliano, acoustic archaeologist Umashankar Manthravadi and echolocation teacher/blind researcher and activist Thomas Tajo.

Tully Arnot is one of Australia’s leading visual artists. Arnot’s practice explores the effect that contemporary technology has on human relationships, looking at the isolating nature of our increasingly connected, but ultimately disconnected world. Themes of automation and simulation feature strongly in Arnot’s work, while relationships between human and vegetal worlds are explored as allegory for social or political structures.

Arnot completed a Bachelor of Design, Honours (2009), and Master of Fine Arts (Research) (2014) at UNSWA+D. His international residencies include an exchange at Universitat der Kunste Berlin in 2013 with Gregor Schneider, as well as masterclasses at Donghua University Shanghai and Politechnico di Milano through Richard Goodwin’s Porosity Studio. In 2020-2021 Arnot was a City of Sydney Creative Fellowship artist, and his work has been shown widely both locally and internationally.