Exhibition

2025: Another amazing year for my videos!

2025 has ended up as another amazing year for my videos! Overall, 22 different videos have been shown in some way in 17 countries around the world for a total of nearly 60 screenings. Four videos – Eviction, DEADEYE, WHY-EEELA and The Exclusion Principle –  won awards or were short-listed for awards at international festivals.

The year began on a big note with The Taken Path, a 6-screen installation made in collaboration with Catherine Truman, exhibited at Carrick Hill as part of the 2025 Adelaide Festival. A different single screen version was exhibited later in the year at the ANAT SPECTRA conference in Queensland.

While most of my work is shown internationally, it has been especially gratifying to have videos screened at different short film festivals around Australia this year, since it is rare for local festivals to encompass experimental film as part of a general program. I will continue to support these events, even if my work does not get selected.

Most of the videos deal with the state of the environment in some way or another: climate change, habitat destruction, and the consequential effects on the survival of plants and animals, many of which we … Click here for more.

The Taken Path – an open ended experiment in observation and embodied experience – single screen version

The Carrick Hill estate, nestled on unceded Kaurna land in the foothills of Adelaide, South Australia, presents a conundrum of the delicate connections between humans and the greater environment. Here, pure fantasy and the hard reality of both ancient and present life are encountered at once in a microcosm of the wider world.

At monthly intervals over a year, Catherine Truman and I used an iPhone and professional video camera respectively to record their walks along a defined path that traverses the natural and altered landscapes of Carrick Hill. This speculative, durational project was inspired by a poetic idea: what would we notice if we walked the same path, once a month over the course of a year and recorded the journey?

This repeated action reveals profound shifts of climate and impacts of human industry. If we keep to the path already taken, what happens to our powers of observation? If we walk it many times, does our awareness shift or is it becalmed? What can we learn anew from this repetition?

The control sequences represent the recordings of our walks along the Taken Path. Up hill, to the east, adjacent to some remnant, largely degraded native woodland, stands a … Click here for more.

Because We Can

“We purify, filter, sift, rectify, unburden… stupefy, impose, stun, devastate, overwhelm… radiate, bewitch…”

But why? Why do we cause so much damage to our own environment, and then spend so much in attempting to recreate it after our own designs? What is it that underlies our desire to transform the natural world into something of our own making?

Botanic Gardens symbolise the tension between the human desire to admire nature and to control it. Almost none of the vegetation in a Botanic Garden is native to the area. Consequently, the original local environment must be skilfully managed and manipulated to provide diverse growth conditions suitable for exotic plants from all over the world. At the same time, the Gardens must be somehow attractive to human visitors. In a dry climate such as South Australia, the fundamental key to meeting both these demands is the controlled supply of water. 

Although a major function of modern botanic gardens is dedicated to preserving and understanding endangered species, many were originally established to celebrate and illustrate the achievements of the colonialist enterprise.

In this video, we see the different ways in which water inhabits the interfaces between the natural and the manufactured. Now and … Click here for more.

science and art

The Neuroscience of Embodiment

a feeling for the body

How do we understand the feeling we have for our own body? Where does that feeling start and finish when we are using a familiar tool or playing a musical instrument, for example? Modern neuroscience is getting ever closer to answering these questions with the development of concepts such as ‘Motor Cognition’. Ian does not do primary research in this area, but he knows the field well, having taught about it for years…

Since 2007, Ian has been collaborating with artist, Catherine Truman, to explore the consequences of these ideas on the ways we learn anatomy and how we communicate the feelings for the body we have acquired throughout our lives. This formed the basis of their work in not absolute and The Microscope Project.  This work also deeply informed his collaborations with Garry Stewart and the Australian Dance Theatre in the development of Be Your Self and Proximity.

Read Phantom Limb, one of Ian’s poems about body sense here.

Read about Ian’s collaborations with Catherine Truman in the study of anatomy here.

Read a conversation between Ian and Garry Stewart here.

Music

… Click here for more.

The Taken Path at Carrick Hill, Adelaide Festival 2025

The Taken Path: a durational project
Catherine Truman & Ian Gibbins

Controls: 2 channel video, HD, 03:43:45, 2 x 75″ screens, silent (2025)
Peripheries: 4 channel video, HD, 00:58:14, 4 x 43″ screens, silent (2025)
Soundtracks: 2 x 2 channel stereo, 01:00:49 and 01:04:33 (2025)

The Wall Gallery, Carrick Hill House Museum
46 Carrick Hill Drive, Springfield, SA 5062

Wednesday 12th February – Sunday 16th March 2025
Wednesdays – Sundays | 10:00am – 4:30pm

https://www.adelaidefestival.com.au/events/the-taken-path

The Carrick Hill estate, nestled in the foothills of Adelaide, presents a conundrum of the delicate connections between humans and the greater environment. Here, pure fantasy and the hard reality of both ancient and present life are encountered at once in a microcosm of the wider world.

At monthly intervals over a year, my long-standing artist friend and collaborator Catherine Truman and I used an iPhone and professional video camera respectively to record our walks along a defined path that traverses the natural and altered landscapes at Carrick Hill. This speculative, durational project was inspired by a poetic idea: what would we notice if we walked the same path, once a month over the course of a year and … Click here for more.

The Taken Path: a durational project – Carrick Hill, 2025 Adelaide Festival

The Taken Path: a durational project
Catherine Truman & Ian Gibbins

Controls: 2 channel video, HD, 03:43:45, 2 x 75″ screens, silent (2025)
Peripheries: 4 channel video, HD, 00:58:14, 4 x 43″ screens, silent (2025)
Soundtracks: 2 x 2 channel stereo, 01:00:49 and 01:04:33 (2025)

The Wall Gallery, Carrick Hill
46 Carrick Hill Drive, Springfield, SA 5062

Wednesday 12 February – Sunday 16 March 2025
Wednesdays – Sundays 10:00am – 4:30pm

https://www.adelaidefestival.com.au/events/the-taken-path

The Carrick Hill estate, nestled in the foothills of Adelaide, presents a conundrum of the delicate connections between humans and the greater environment. Here, pure fantasy and the hard reality of both ancient and present life are encountered at once in a microcosm of the wider world.

At monthly intervals over a year, my long-standing artist friend and collaborator Catherine Truman and I used an iPhone and professional video camera respectively to record our walks along a defined path that traverses the natural and altered landscapes at Carrick Hill. This speculative, durational project was inspired by a poetic idea: what would we notice if we walked the same path, once a month over the course of a year and recorded the journey?

This repeated … Click here for more.