Lichen Kelp

As well as curating for Forum of Sensory Motion, Lichen Kelp (nee Kemp) has a solo practice as a performance chemist and sculptor who works with scientific principles of experimentation, colour chemistry and chemical reactions to question conventional ideas about beauty and investigate the ongoing dialectic between the natural and the artificial.

Lichen’s interest in the agency of materials and the materiality of process typically manifests as contingent, time-based works which echo and reimagine natural forces such as weather patterns, chemical interactions, snowmelt, blooming and fruiting, and decomposition.

Lichen creates otherworldly landscapes with domestic and recycled ingredients whose humbleness contrasts with the lurid botanical palettes she produces. Her performances typically involve sound, assemblage, live experimentation and observation, and tactics of submersion with various local floral elements.

Lichen has recently extended her performance into sound generating experiments, employing a range of unique electronic devices including colour-sensitive drum synthesiser jewellery and building and devising instruments such as a water synthesiser; a percussive flowerphone and interactive touch-based ice instruments.

In 2018 Lichen attended Digital Naturalism conference in Koh Lon, Thailand where she stayed on a floating hacker lab and created a foraged musical cocktail based on a colour-changing Thai herb endemic to the nearby island.

She has had two residencies in 2017 and 2018 at Testing Grounds and performed with Kelp D and Benjamin Hancock in Athens and at Liquid Architecture's Why Listen to Plants program. She has also performed at System Garden Melbourne Uni, MPavillion, C3 Gallery and more. In November 2019 she is curating a Musical Picnic afternoon of performances and poetry at System Garden, for Ian Potter Foundation.

She held water synthesiser workshops at Signal in April, has a residency coming up at FLOAT in Gippsland and is doing a project with The Unconformity in Queenstown, Tasmania starting in February. 2020 also sees her continuing to research and develop further residency projects for FSM and she has recently launched the algae research group Seaweed Appreciation Society international (SASi).

http://lichenkelp.com/

https://www.forumofsensorymotion.com/

Documentation