The Biodiversity of Tamborine Mountain - A Video Archive


		The Tamborine Mountain Archive was created by Peter Kuttner, who has lived on the mountain since 1987. He arrived from England, where he was born and raised, and was soon captivated by the Australian landscape, flora and fauna. But he was also aware of how vulnerable it is. From the Mountain's eastern escarpments he looked down on the rapid sprawl of development along Australia's playground, the Gold Coast. Kuttner's background is in the arts. As a young man he was a radical artist, exploring new media in the late 60s and 70s and was one of the early exponents of performance art. But this was art in the community, for the people, not abstruse. His concern was always to make connections between people and ideas, perception and its expression. Living on Tamborine Mountain he became active in the community, published a local tourist guide and supported local interest groups. Driven by his love of the sub-tropical rainforest, he campaigned for conservation and argued for the introduction of effective planning controls. In 1998 he acquired a video camera and started filming in the rainforest. Then in local gardens, the national parks, by the roadside . . . wherever there was something that caught his eye. His subject is the detail of forms and the wonder of the natural world. This is inexhaustible. After three years he had 44 hours of material. He started assembling it into the Archive to share with others, now and in the future, this picture of life where he lives.



		AN INSTALLATION Kuttner is currently investigating ways of using the Archive to introduce more awareness of biodiversity, for instance within an installation for exhibition. A DOCUMENTARY He is also developing a proposal for a TV Film Documentary about outstanding biodiversity, using the Mountain as the location. TALKS Peter Kuttner is available to give talks about the Archive, how it came to be made and what inspired him.