Marlene Creates in Conversation with Liz Wells

The Land Water Research Group in the School of Art, Design and Architecture is pleased to welcome environmental artist Marlene Creates to a talk about her life-time art practice.

An in-conversation between Marlene Creates and Professor Emeritus Liz Wells will take place at the end of the talk.

This event is hosted by Land Water Research Group and The Bridge.

All welcome!

Marlene Creates

Forty-Five Years of Landworks in Forty-Five Minutes (or so)

Marlene Creates is not a studio artist who makes things—she has worked outside for over 45 years. For half that time, the focus of her work has been one particular place—the 6-acre patch of old-growth boreal forest where she lives on the island of Newfoundland/ Ktaqmkuk.

Her hybrid processes include memory map drawing, photography, video, poetry, installation, scientific and vernacular knowledge, and site-specific multidisciplinary guided walks. Her work has been an exploration of the reciprocal relationships between human experience, memory, language and the land, and the impact they have on each other.

In this talk, she will present some of the projects that led to her recent and ongoing work with the boreal forest that surrounds her.

Marlene Creates is a Canadian environmental artist living and working on the island of Newfoundland. Her work has been presented in over 350 exhibitions and screenings across Canada and internationally.

She works at the intersection of cultural geography, critical cartography, place-based art, and community engagement. For the past 23 years the focus of her work has been the 6-acre/2.4-hectare patch of old-growth boreal forest where she lives on the island of Newfoundland/Ktaqmkuk.

She has received many awards, including a Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts for “Lifetime Artistic Achievement”; the Order of Newfoundland & Labrador, the province’s highest honour; and an Honorary Doctorate (D. Litt.) from Memorial University of Newfoundland.

She says, “Underlying all my work has been an interest in place—not as a geographical location but as a process that involves layers of memory, multiple narratives, ecology, language, politics, emotions, and both scientific and vernacular knowledge.”

Marlene Creates acknowledges that she lives and works on the island that is the unceded ancestral homeland of the Beothuk and Mi’kmaq peoples. With her work, she strives to create meaningful relationships between people and place, while honouring over 8,000 years of stewardship of the provincial territory by a succession of Indigenous people.

Liz Wells writer, curator, and lecturer on photographic practices, edited and co-wrote Photography: A Critical Introduction (2021, 6th ed. 7th ed. due 2026), and is editor for The Photography Reader and The Photography Culture Reader (2019), London: Routledge. She co-founded and co-edits photographies, Routledge journals. She is series editor for Photography, Place, Environment, Routledge. (Bloomsbury Academic 2016 – 2021/Routledge, from March 2021).

She is Professor Emeritus in Photographic Culture, Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Business, University of Plymouth, UK, and remains active in the Land Water Research Group.

In 2017 she received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, in 2021, she was awarded Honored Educator, Society for Photographic Education (USA), and in 2022, The Royal Photographic Society, J Dudley Johnston Award for research in photographic culture that focusses on land, landscape, place and environment, as well as on photographic theory and practices.

The Land Water Research Group is a collective of international academic researchers specialising in art, design, architecture, and built environment practices. We adopt interdisciplinary methods to explore diverse creative and critical practices. The research group serves as a platform for dialogue and exchange of ideas concerning nature, culture, aesthetics, and the representation of land, landscape, and place.

It aims to foster critical engagement and reflection on environmental issues and climate change. We aim to develop future projects, such as exhibitions, publications, and collaborative research proposals. Postgraduate students are encouraged to participate in all research activities

Research in Art, Design and Architecture has a unique ability to offer valuable insights into contemporary environmental challenges. The research group is dedicated to exploring how these specialist fields can deepen our understanding of shared environment.

The research group runs a series of research seminars, workshops and symposia with the aim to bring together our international community of researchers and postgraduate students to share common research interests and develop new projects.

The research group is based at the University of Plymouth, UK, and organises research events on campus and online.

Date: Monday 12 May 2025

Time: 14:00 – 15:30

Venue: The Levinsky Room, Roland Levinsky Building

Ticket information: Free (booking required)

Age restriction: None

Image credit: Marlene Creates