Bunbury Biennale 2023

BUNBURY BIENNALE CULTURE/ NATURE

April 02 – June 05, 2023

BUNBURY BIENNALE CULTURE/ NATURE

INTRODUCTION

Dr. Michael Bianco, Director, Bunbury Regional Art Gallery

Many are confounded by the larger existential threats posed by these massive environmental changes and are confused about how we will move forward as a species. In response, the Bunbury Regional Art Gallery’s 2023 Bunbury Biennale: Culture/Nature has been an umbrella project of exhibitions and events focused on exploring the dynamics of our society to the environment.

For many, art galleries represent the pinnacle expression of a civilisation. As spaces that house our thoughts and stories captured in artefacts, they serve as sanctuaries of contemplation and as the temples of our civilization’s worldviews. But in this time of tremendous social and environmental upheaval, arguably art galleries are more than spaces of leisurely thought: they are a frontline for the cultural change needed to combat the climate crises.

Unfortunately, as many cultural theorists have noted, our ability as a society to shift towards more ecological-minded behaviours is likely limited by the structures of our institutions, and by the very nature of how we think. As the great poet, feminist, and civil rights activist Audre Lorde once wrote:

“The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.”

The fact is, in order to survive as a species, we must fundamentally change the way we know ourselves as a society, and act accordingly. As such, artists, as visionaries and makers of new “cultural tools,” are the world-makers of countercultures and new eco-centric worldviews. Through them we may begin to see how the old master’s house might be dismantled, and how we might begin to build a new house collectively with the myriad of other species we are dependent upon. I am grateful to all the participants in this year’s Biennale and admire their bravery as they call on us to reconsider how we might begin to live well, and well within our means, in this endangered ecosystem.

Sweeping shifts in our environment, largely the result of human activities, are disrupting norms around the world and causing civilization to transition through a radical moment in history.

THROUGH THE COSMOS ON THE TIP OF A HAIR

Dr. Michael Bianco, Director, Bunbury Regional Art Gallery

March 11th, 2023. For late winter, it feels oddly warm in Japan. Standing on a mountain top in Hokkaido, with Siberia literally just beyond the horizon, I feel strangely more comfortable in a tee-shirt than I do a heavy coat. Listening to a deep bell ringing in the distance, I close my eyes and reflect on how the weather has felt peculiar since my arrival to the country only days before.

I had anticipated Tokyo would be cold and grey based on my previous experiences there. Arriving in the city centre wearing the same summer clothes I had departed Perth in, I was shocked by Tokyo’s West Australian-like temperatures. Exiting the station, I had discovered masses of people hoarding around the first blooms of Japan’s famous cherry trees, all budding nearly a month early. Clearly, I wasn’t the only one being affected by the climate.

Armed with smartphones, the crowds created a sea of blue light that flickered and danced around the trees’ edges – a digital tide lapping at the tips of a biological wonder. Despite the cacophonous culture surrounding them, the citizens of Tokyo had all instinctually stopped to try and capture the natural splendour unfolding before them in the heart of one of the world’s densest urban environments. The delicate blossoms have long served as a metaphor for the precarity of life, teaching us the necessity to appreciate the fleeting qualities of beauty while it is present before us.

As a beekeeper, felt joy as I watched a few honeybees gather bundles of pollen to feed their young – a sign of spring and new life to come. The few bees that were there hummed as they excitedly passed. From blossom to blossom, their raucous pollination broke some of the young buds, causing the delicate petals to drift down to the ground like

fresh snow. But the petals did not melt into the warm sidewalk. As I looked through the speckled pink blanket of flowers to the slate below, a circular brass plate emerged with burning light. Embossed with an icon of six circles arranged in cruciform, I immediately recognized the logo embedded in the access lid – Tokyo Electric Power Company. I stared at the TEPCO logo with bewilderment and horror.

I began to recognize a familiar ringing in my ears. Looking up again, the massive Ueno train station came into full view. The hum of the bees was subdued by the roaring buzz of vending machines, noodle shops, automated doors, loudspeaker announcements, and people jamming in and out of train cars like animals being readied for live export. The hive of Tokyo was in full flurry before my eyes, all fuelled by the electric-nectar flowing beneath my feet – all generated and supplied by TEPCO power plants. I turned away from the chaos, my eyes panickily searching for the bees again. Where were they? Why were there so few? It’s not yet spring, so why does it feel like summer’s eve? My mind raced.

I shut my eyes hard and committed the beauty of the dappled afternoon light through the cherry blossoms to memory.

The bell strikes again.

The ring echoes through the valley below. My eyes reopen. Whisps of clouds graze the edges of Mt. Yotei in the distance. The wind howls lightly over the snow. I focus on the sublime beauty of the snow-capped mountain before me and recall the lesson of the cherry blossoms. I can hear trickles of water running beneath the thick snow. It’s clear there will be an unseasonably early thaw to what has been a heavy winter.

The bell strikes again.

I close my eyes and turn my thoughts to remembrance. My heart is filled with unease.

I know not all is right in the world. The bell strikes again.

The TEPCO logo flashes before my mind’s eye. The sun’s rays bite at my face, and the sharp wind prickles my arms, and I can feel a cold hollowness growing within me.

The bell strikes again.

It’s 3/11 – the twelfth anniversary of the Tohoku earthquake, and the melt down of TEPCO’s Daiichi nuclear power plant in Fukushima.

Strike. Strike. Strike.

March 14th, 2023.

I’m standing at the base of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, the iconic modernist building designed by Kenzo Tange. Built on cast concrete legs, with windows conjoined by deep ribs, the building gives the impression of a cricket cage

floating in space. The first time I saw the building was in Alain Resnais’ classic film Hiroshima Mon Amour. Shot fourteen years after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima the film captures the structure’s severe nature in a flattened and lifeless landscape. Now, surrounded by greenery, tourists, and school children, the building stands as a brutalist memorial for one of the greatest atrocities against life on earth.

As I turn to the north, a series of memorials fall into perfect alignment: the Cenotaph for the A-bomb Victims; the Pond of Peace; and the Flame of Peace all configured perfectly to frame what is now commonly referred to as the A-bomb Dome. Originally designed by Czech architect Jan Letzel in the early 20th century, the domed building once

The hubris of my culture has tried to convince me civilization is as solid as iron, but I have been tempered and humbled by the more-than-human world.

Dr. Michael Bianco Japan 2023

served as a civic centre and public exhibition space. That all changed at 8:15 a.m. on August 6th, 1945, when the Enola Gay dropped “Little Boy,” a 15-kiloton atomic bomb directly above the building. Within a blink of an eye, tens of thousands of people, and the vibrant heart of Hiroshima, were all incinerated instantly. Today the building stands as a reminder of the tremendous destructive capacities we wield as a species, and as a call for world peace and nuclear disarmament.

I turn to my right. There, propped up with wooden crutches, is a Chinese Parasol Tree. Originally located 1.3 kilometres away, the tree had taken the full brunt of the atomic blast, losing all of its branches and leaves, with half of its trunk burnt out completely. Going into fall and winter, the tree appeared to be just another casualty. But in the spring a miracle happened: the tree sprung back to life. Like a phoenix from the ashes, the new buds on the tree offered hope to the survivors of the bombing. In 1973 the tree was transplanted outside the museum, and in the years that have followed, clones of the tree have been distributed around the world as expressions of fraternity and world peace. Life persists.

March 24th, 2023.

The water surrounding my little boat is flat, and the scent of woodchips hangs low in the air. I reach into my bag to find the small, folded ticket I saved from the museum in Hiroshima. Holding the paper square between my fingers, I stare at the woodchip pile in the Bunbury port and wonder if the ticket is made from trees logged from the same forest. Adjacent to the mound, I can see a freighter ship being loaded, its Pimsoll line slowly descending into the surface. As I watch, I notice the way the aluminium hull of the dingy feels both hot and cold against my feet, and I wonder if it too was once ore being loaded

in this same harbor. I turn my attention to the grain silos stacked against each other at the port’s edge. Filled with noodle-wheat, my stomach gurgles at the recent memory of steaming bowls of Udon in Tokyo as imagine what’s inside their metallic bellies.

Noongar boodja, extracted as grain, harvested and shipped to Japan, extruded into chewy noodles, boiled with Australian Uranium, digested and incorporated into my American-born body, now floating gently in Koombana Bay.

A pod of dolphins approaches the boat. I kill the motor. They drift and dart weightlessly beneath me for a while, and then stop. Presuming they are bored with my presence, I watch them turn and dive, their dorsal fins breaking the surface of the water in slow repetition as they swim away. One remains behind. Spectral in its approach, the dolphin comes to a gentle stop besides the dinghy, hovering and turning to its side to reveal its pale sleek stomach. It’s close enough to touch without having to stretch, but I refrain. As I look down at its face, I realise the dolphin is looking directly back at me. Eyes locked, caught in its gaze, I can sense that it has no fear. Its comfort is startling. It’s clear as feel its eye analyse me that I am the guest in its home. I am the newcomer. As gently as it had arrived, the dolphin turns again and disappears into the waters below.

The sun is setting again over the Indian Ocean, turning the sea from a pale azure to a mercurial lavender. The hubris of my culture has tried to convince me civilization is as solid as iron, but I have been tempered and humbled by the more-thanhuman world. Today’s looming towers of steel are already the rusty dust of tomorrow’s desert floor.

Dr. Michael Bianco Japan 2023

CULTURE / NATURE

The Bunbury Biennale is a major West Australian contemporary art event that was initiated in 1993 with the aim to acquire new works from the exhibition to expand and diversify the City of Bunbury Art Collection.

Since its inception, this biennial exhibition has become an open platform for artists to present the latest trends in cutting-edge contemporary art, by pushing boundaries, exploring challenging concepts and stretching the limits of viewpoints.

The 2023 Bunbury Biennale is organized around the theme ‘Culture/Nature’ and presents a series of exhibitions highlighting a wide array of creative practitioners dedicated to critically engaging the environment.

The Biennale presents a cohesive survey of selected contemporary artists responding to the theme, Culture/Nature Nature and the environment have long been an inspiration for artists around the world. However, what was once a celebration of humans’ closeness to nature has evolved to expressing an urgency and concern for the dire reality of our planet’s ecosystem.

This exhibition is an eclectic display of narratives and investigations pointing to the vulnerable and delicate status of our current environment. Exploring personal, cultural, environmental, and political

topics, the artists express themselves through a variety of traditional and contemporary mediums. There is strong articulation and deep engagement with contemporary ecological and political issues affecting the land and people, reminding us of our unsustainable relationship with the planet.

Participating artists prove once again the essentiality of art as a visual platform for conveying the urgency of matters such as awareness, responsibility, and sustainability. Art creates spaces for us to engage in, on an individual and collective level, and can even act as a catalyst, compelling us to act.

As the curator for the City of Bunbury Art Collection I have seen the Bunbury Biennale evolve into an event that represents a way of displaying and contextualizing art that makes it relevant to society and accessible to contemporary audiences. And it has been a real pleasure to work alongside Dr. Michael Bianco, our new BRAG director, whose progressive approach and visions have taken the Biennale into new and expanding directions.

I would like to thank and congratulate all the exhibiting artists for their support and outstanding contributions, and I also like to acknowledge our highly motived BRAG Team for their dedication and professionalism and making this event happen.

Caroline Lunel, Curator City of Bunbury Art Collection

Various Artists Bunbury Biennale

“We have art in order not to die of the truth.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

Krill are one of the lesser celebrated wonders of the ocean, despite being critical to the entire Antarctic food web. Swarms of krill can number between 10,000–30,000 per cubic metre. In terms of biomass, they are one of the most abundant species on the planet. They are bioluminescent, carbon capturing, nutrient cycling, climate heroes! Penguins, seabirds, seals, fish and whales all rely on krill as food. Without krill, these species would disappear.

Human driven environmental changes including industrial overfishing, melting sea ice, pollution and ocean acidification have led to a decline in Antarctic Krill populations of 80% since the 1970s. Protecting the ocean and maintaining large swarms of krill is essential for a healthy ocean and a healthy planet.

Krill (2023) was created by the artist through a combination of hand drawn elements and digital tools. Each tiny crustacean in this swarm of Antarctic Krill is presented at 1:1 scale.

This blue edition of ‘Krill’ is a bespoke work created specifically for the Bunbury Biennale 2023. The artwork is made using archival inks and photographic paper, mounted with clear gloss acrylic and backed with an aluminium subframe.  Ian Daniell’s Life-Size Ocean Art celebrates marine life and calls for its protection. Bright blocks of colour and clearly defined forms are hallmarks of these artworks, which present each oceanic subject at 1:1 scale. His work conveys the vast scale of some creatures and the intricate small-scale wonder of others. The emblematic mode harnesses the language of warning signs and speaks to the threatened status of each species.

Ian Daniell is a British artist and ocean explorer based in Margaret River, Western Australia. His practice, Life-Size Ocean Art is a celebration of Australia’s iconic marine life and an ode to encounters in the wild.  Having grown up by the north east coast of England, Ian studied at both Chelsea and Camberwell College of Arts in London between 2006 and 2010. Ian produced two solo exhibitions and featured in several group shows, including the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, during a twelve year spell in the UK capital.

In 2018 the artist travelled to Western Australia. Subsequent encounters with wild orca, whale sharks and giant manta rays inspired him to relocate and begin producing his current series of work. Several exhibitions throughout Western Australia’s Margaret River Region followed in 2021 and 2022. His most recent solo exhibition OCEAN opened at Kamilė Gallery, Perth, WA, in February 2023.

Ian Daniell

Krill 2023

Archival ink, photographic paper, acrylic, aluminium subframe

IAN DOWLING

Tetrapods are the result of human research and ingenuity. On coastlines susceptible to severe erosion by sometimes intense wave power, they can be used to disperse the wave energy through many deflections in the tangle of curved solids and space.

Ian has a strong interest in patterns in nature that repeat and evolve. In the original layout the tetrapods form patterns of edges, curves and spaces. Over time the layout becomes released from this tight matrix by weathering and eventually breaking down.

There is also the creation of new habitat for flora and fauna species that survive in the intertidal zones.

Ian’s ceramic artwork looks at what could be the future for these guardian walls, as they interact and adjust to their own environment and their evolving space.

Ian Dowling

It’s a Tangled Life (detail) 2022-23

Ceramics – fired with inclusions of local rocks, wood, charcoal, seaweed, shells, bones, wood ash, feathers and ceramic sherds

Ian Dowling was born in Perth in 1950. His interest in ceramics developed while studying in the early 1970’s and resulted in working alongside Fremantle artist Joan Campbell in 1976/7. After working for many years with clay and fire in the Mid West and South West of WA, Ian studied toward a Master of Visual Arts at Monash University. This included two months based at Monash’s Prato campus in Italy.

Ian and wife Beth closed the large Margaret River Pottery workshop in 2003 and established a more private studio at their home property. Here Ian concentrates on individual sculptural pieces, functional ceramics and multiple piece experimental ceramics. With the help of a professional assistant, he has completed a number of larger-scale public and private commissions using cast, slab and thrown ceramic techniques, steel, masonry and concrete.

Ian’s architectural ceramic art commissions have featured in several texts and magazines published in the UK, China and the USA. Over the last 3 years, Ian has concentrated on larger scale public artwork at public and private buildings in Perth, including St John of God Midland Public Hospital and Crown Towers in Burswood and Barangaroo Sydney.

JOHN EDEN

As a tourist in the Karijini gorges, I feel acutely aware of being out of place. However, beyond the awe-inspiring beauty, I am starting to understand the spiritual side of this land, its sacred role to dreamtime; it is palpable. My respect and gratitude to first nations people, to elders past and present, storytellers, keepers of knowledge, and cultural custodians: this is your land, and it always will be.

I am humbled to have seen it and walked upon it. The gorges live in my brain now, in memory, dream and feeling. To my mind, Karijini needs scale to truly take you there. I want to make large works –immersive, reflective, meditative works. Through drawing and painting I come to terms with the land and my place in it.

Drawing and painting since Art College in the 80s. Art teacher since 1991. At Kalamunda High since 2002.

I was planning on making art when I retired, but the pandemic pushed me hard to re-evaluate. My late emerging artist career so far: Solo exhibitions in 2021, Landmarks at Paper Mountain and Between borders at The Nyisztor Studio. In 2022 Tales from the Bush at Mundaring Art Centre and “Art is History” at The Kalamunda Zig Zag Gallery.

My current Karijini work has earned representation from The Kolbusz Space. I have a solo there in May 2023 as well as another planned for The Zig Zag in June.

I have been a finalist in fifteen Art Awards since 2020 and won first prize (2D) at the Kalamunda Lions Art Award for my portrait of local legend, Pat Hallahan. I was also Highly Commended at The Darlington Open for my self-portrait.

John Eden Dreaming in Details (detail) 2022/23

Charcoal and cricket ball on paper mounted to board

ELIZABETH EDMONDS

Edmonds

I have painted the Walpole Wilderness area many times, fascinated by the landscape’s history and narrative at different spatial and temporal scales, from microscopic fossil pollen records to wholistic interpretations of environmental change over thousands of years. This exploration has become such an integral part of my life, connecting with the landscape often in a visual introspective way. Working with ink on rice paper, drawing, following, and exploring the tree shape or branch line allows me time to consider the fragility and vulnerability of trees such as the Red-Flowering Gum (Corymbia

ficifolia, yorgum) and Bull Banksia (Banksia grandis mungite). Both iconic and once more widespread, are now just holding on, being pushed to their natural limits with the pressure of a drying climate and impacts of clearing, disease and altered fire regimes. The drawings wax preservation adds a visual depth of field like an old black and white portrait photograph. A snapshot captured in time.

Dr Elizabeth Edmonds is a renowned research scientist as well as a visual artist. She lives and works in Walpole in the south west of WA, where she owns and operates Petrichor Gallery. Previously, she has worked in university research and teaching and still works on collaborative projects that inform her art practice.

Her artwork combines her palaeoecological knowledge of southwestern landscapes with a desire to raise awareness about ecologically significant communities such as peatlands and eucalypt habitats. Specialising in watercolour, peat paints and wax, her detailed fine ink drawings on paper are an intimate exploration of the identity of trees, each with their own distinctive qualities; collectively they represent diversity.

Since 2016 she has participated in numerous exhibitions including a solo show at the Western Australian Museum of the Great Southern, three times finalist in the Bunbury Regional Art Gallery’s South West Art Now FORM WA The Goods Shed and The Painted Tree Gallery with the SWAN23 tour, and group shows with the Collie Art Gallery, The Creative Grid WA Alternative Archive and Open Borders series. She is currently a recipient of the Eucalypt Australia Dahl Fellowship 2023 working on her The Tale of Two Trees project. Elizabeth has curated more than 27 exhibitions for visiting artists to the southwest region, teaches workshops regularly and her work is represented in private collections in Australia and overseas.

Elizabeth

Iconic 2023

Ink, rice paper and wax on board

FIONA GAVINO

There is an intrinsic link between basket weaving techniques and the natural world, for example – the construction of DNA. It appears to mimic a repeated action as if woven together to form one strand that is life and, in nature I have found numerous patterns that weaving mimics. Working through this medium leads me to negate the nature/culture divide. The process of weaving also inadvertently brings about a kind of residual transformation, small snippets of knowledge are gained sometimes about the materials or techniques and sometimes about the big picture of life, love and living. I have been taught that relationships are the magical invisible thread interconnecting us all. The installation The Relational Weave of Life, is a multilayered work juxtaposing Weaving Meditation II and The Sentinel. There is the idea of a strong environmental concern that these artefacts make in the artist’s

modest choice of materials – repurposed rusty metal strapping, cane off cuts (from the studio) and salvaged marine rope. The technique of weaving the herringbone metal work The Relational Weave of Life is taken from the Filipino sawali (woven wall) with my two halves bound through the centre with the presence of the natural. The Relational Weave of Life feels like you’re looking at a window, not outwood looking but backwards and forwards. It is a glimpse at a need for a new ecology promoting an understanding of the relationship between past/ present, left/right ideologies & nature/culture. The Sentinel stands with a slight tilt of an old woman, suggestive of the matriarch, of mother, of nature. The two objects’ interconnectedness is discernible. Framed together synthesising the manufactured with the natural as a representation of the socio ecological relationships that bind us all.

Fiona Gavino

The Relational Weave of Life; Weaving Meditation II & The Sentinel 2022/23

Salvaged mild steel strapping, plywood, mesh, cane; salvaged Sea Shepherd rope

Fiona Gavino has been described as an intercultural artist working the traditional into the contemporary. Gavino graduated from Charles Darwin University with a BA Visual Arts in 2006 and was a practising artist there for 12 years. Her work features in Hot Springs; the Northern Territory & Contemporary Australian Artists (Macmillan Art Publishing), in 2007 she relocated to Western Australia and currently lives and works in Fremantle. In 2014 Gavino was a recipient of an Asialink Residency and was invited to return the following year to exhibit at the Cultural Centre of the Philippines with a solo show, In-between-spaces Gavino uses basket making materials and techniques in new and innovative ways, working within a framework of intercultural and transcultural pursuits, a reflection of the artist’s own ethnic ambiguity and well developed political consciousness.

JILLIAN GREEN

I feel that there are two competing concerns which have been apparent in much of my work over the years. One is a need for simplicity and minimal designs with ‘shape’ being the essential element; the other is for texture and quite detailed pattern within these shapes. I have danced around these two issues over the years, be it with drawing, painting, or textiles. I am very interested in folk art and my current ideas increasingly revolve

around my home and animals. As local as folk art traditionally is, there seem to be some qualities that span centuries and continents. I see these qualities in early Christian art, especially the naive wood and stone carvings of the 12th-13th century Europe, the Primitive Folk Art of late 18th-19th century North America, all the way up to the astonishing contemporary folk art of Japanese artist Samiro Yunoki.

I was born in Kalgoorlie, Western Australia in 1966, my family moved to Perth in 1974 where later attended Applecross High School as a Special Art student. I began exhibiting in 1989 and went on to complete a degree in Visual Art at Edith Cowan University in 2001. Following this began exhibiting with The Church Gallery, which later became Turner Galleries. To date I have had 12 solo exhibitions and been involved in many shared and curated exhibitions. My work was shown at The Melbourne International Art Fair 2006 and 2008 and was presented in The Role of Abstraction in Contemporary Art 2012 in Istanbul. It is held in 17 public collections and several private collections.

This work represents the intersection of natural and synthetic processes. The piece itself conjures images of sky and land, the inner world of the biological, and the limitless expanse of our cosmos. The forms that emerge within the paintings are simultaneously cloud-like and cellular, shapes that could just as easily be observed through a telescope as a microscope. Before us lies the red dust of the open pit mine or the pitted surface of Mars; against that backdrop we observe the gleaming metals acquired through excavation or the silvery dance of celestial bodies.

By contrast, these works are rendered through synthetic means. What binds the evolving forms and pauses them in-situ is the poured resin, immobilising previously shifting shapes to be observed at a later stage. It is the application of a permanent, immovable sheen enveloping all movement that allows the onlooker a glimpse at (otherwise hidden) organic interactions. The viewer becomes an active participant in the work and is at once engaging with and reflected in the piece.

Miik is a researcher and educator in contemporary arts in Western Australia. He is also an associate editor for two international art journals, a published author and previous chair of Artsource, Western Australia’s peak visual arts body. He has been invited to speak on arts practice at national and international conferences, from Paris and Rome to Budapest.

Miik Green Xylem series: meiosis24 (diptych) (detail) 2023 Mixed media on aluminium

Miik lives in Perth and works from his Maylands studio: he is represented by Linton & Kay Contemporary in WA and throughout USA with Holly Hunt.

SUSAN HAURI-DOWNING

The ecosystems of Australia’s south-west are unique and highly threatened by human activity and climate change. We exist in a strange dance between destroying and conserving the fragile, sensitive ecologies and species we live with. The to-scale etching of the William’s Spider orchid, found in our south-west, is one of the rarest orchids in Australia, existing in a bushland reserve in the Wheatbelt region of WA.

Biodiversity hotspots are distinct for being the most biologically prolific yet threatened regions. A hotspot is qualified by having over 1,500 species of endemic vascular plants yet losing at least 70% of primary native vegetation. Currently, there are 36 such hotspots globally. Australia’s south-west is one of them, where the last 200 years have seen an extraordinary extinction rate.

Glass cloches were used to create protective, albeit fragile, micro-climates to display and showcase orchids and other plants during the

19th century and to preserve and present plant specimens in natural history museums and homes. In this work, the etched drawing on the dome’s surface signifies the precious existence of this endangered species and its ecosystem and the precarious and futile nature of attempts to conserve them. The shadow cast by the drawing reminds us of the threat to their existence and their soon-to-be absence. The work presents a delicate memento mori and provides an opportunity to grieve before these unique plants are lost.

The work is part of a series called Threatened, Rare – Extant, that explores the relationships between rare and endangered orchids and their south-west Australian ecosystems. The series acknowledges the losses due to colonisation and the legacy of conservation efforts in the face of human-induced environmental devastation. It honours our shared grief and loss: threatened, rare – extant.

2023

Sand-etched glass; light

Susan Hauri-Downing is an artist and eco-social worker. She works at the intersections of social work and artistic methodologies and practices. Her practice focuses on urban ecological diversity, biocultural diversity, grief and loss, and the intricacy of interspecies relationships. She builds relationships and facilitates connections with individuals and groups to create artworks that explore ecological and social justice issues. She prefers to work with plants, glass, and repurposed and found materials to create sculptures, installations, drawings, and paintings. She also provides safe spaces for art as therapy and facilitates creative workshops, often focused on relationships with nature, eco-literacy, and grief and loss. She has 20 years of experience working with people from diverse backgrounds and her trauma-sensitive practice is dedicated to strengthening and improving the wellbeing of those with whom she works and the natural systems in which we live.

Susan Hauri-Downing Threatened, Rare, Extant: Caladenia williamsiae (detail)

PABLO HUGHES

As a multidisciplinary artist, Hughes’ practice is not exclusively photographic. While photography is always the central linchpin, it sits within an installation framework, which encompasses obscured glass, mirrors, found objects, paint and collage. Straying from a traditional two-dimensional photographic approach and, interweaving parallel narratives through other mediums, Hughes constructs critical dialogues that explore the notion of displacement – both physical and conceptual – that underpin his multifaceted enquiry. Environmental change, sustainability and recycling are other subjects Hughes is passionate about.

Hughes draws inspiration from contemporary issues both locally and globally, such as escape, change and transformation, all the while questioning socio-political systems and evolving collective realities. His subject matter represents that which is shunned, obscured, overlooked, side stepped or discarded. The juxtapositions highlight the forgotten and frayed edges of the action, creating a complex narrative from the apparent simplicity of the commonplace. His combination of mediums, image associations and image constructions add a layer of ambiguity and improbability that informs a psychogeography as he records the changing environment we inhabit.

Born in Dublin and based in Perth, Pablo Hughes is a multidisciplinary photographer and professional art installer. After completing a BA in Media Studies and Photo media at ECU, Hughes’s work has received a number of photographic awards. Solo exhibitions include Displaced November 2018 at The Lobby, Escape Artist April 2015 at Heathcote Museum and Justaposition, March 2015 at Spectrum. Group shows include the Bunbury Biennale and Psychogeography Hughes has been a finalist in the CLIP Award at the Perth Centre for Photography and the Mandorla Art Award. Hughes’ work is represented in public and private art collections nationally and internationally. Interested in exploring new forms of display that involve printing on unusual surfaces that are outside the box, often site specific in nature. Contemporary and environmental art are his main areas of interest. His images are abstract, textural, painterly and of unusual reflections of displaced subject matter and juxtapositions. Contemplative with hidden messages.

Sky Walker 2023

Installation, Sculpture, Found Object; Materials: Solar Panels, Mirrors, Glass, Silicon, Aluminium

Pablo Hughes

– JULIA SUTTON & PAULINE WHITE

“The way we see the world shapes the way we treat it; if a mountain is a deity, not a pile of ore; if a river is one of the veins of the land, not potential irrigation water; if a forest is a sacred grove, not timber; if other species are biological kin, not resources; or if the planet is our mother, not an opportunity – then we will treat each other with greater respect. This is the challenge, to look at the world from a different perspective”. –

David Suzuki

In our culture of duality there is a sensory hierarchy where sight is privileged. This is evidenced in the history of landscape representation in galleries and museums.

In Veriditas Jupa have freed the canvas from the frame physically and metaphorically. This freedom allows Jupa the flexibility to explore and elevate the other senses particularly touch, sound and smell to form a deeper relationship with nature rather than an observation of it.

Embedding the canvas with the elements of Fire, Water, Wood, Air and metal resulted in the alchemical transformation of eucalyptus and fencing wire to become the substrate for their mark making process.

Their threads were chosen from the list of historical sutures which include gold, cotton, flax, silk, some being dyed with eucalyptus or tea. Thread from teabags were used as mapping time. Relationships are formed over time and tea. “Our practice recorded our sights, sounds and feelings by working en Plein air for 3 months. By using the process of slow suture stitching, plus mark making with stitches of mending and repair we could enter the space where nature dwells and with our senses heightened and more finely tuned we could connect and communicate on levels beyond the visual. We gained an intimacy of exchange with the natural world and the experience of being part of the one organism.”

JUPA is the name of collaborative contemporary artist duo Julia Sutton and Pauline White.

Their partnership began in 2010 with many collaborative community projects and exhibitions such as Trunk art, Bassendean, 2010 – 2012, Swan Song WA Museum Boola Bardip 2012, MegaFlora Chogamosis, Urban Orchard 2012, Vivacious Vistas, Trek the Trail Mundaring 2011 and Fred’s Bed, Holmes a Court Gallery, 2022. Their work together involves developing a language through the use of tactile processes and video to express their feelings and ideas about the uneasy relationship between humans and nature.

JUPA

Veriditas 2023

Canvas, gauze and natural dyed threads, wax, sticks, fencing wire and video media

Pauline graduated from Curtin University in 1991 with a Bachelor of Arts, Fine art and Visual Art and in 2000 with a Master of Arts and has worked as a Lecturer, Curator, Public Artist and artist.

Julia graduated from Curtin University in 2009 with a Associate Degree in Visual Arts and has worked as a tutor, Curator and Public artist and Artist.

Sarah Keirle creates contemporary ceramic sculptures inspired by the unique splendour of seedpods found in the Australian Bush. Released is her latest ceramic sculpture, depicting Banksia menzisii as part of The Seedpod Series, a body of work inspired by the flora of the Darling Range Jarrah/Marri Forest (Perth Hills Region) of Western Australia. This region is part of south-west botanical province, a UNESCO biodiversity hot spot known for its flora and fauna species, many of which are under threat from climate change and development.

The Seedpod Series has been designed and hand-sculptured to reflect the unique shapes of native seedpods; these vessels, these exceptional forms often overlooked or taken for granted but holding precious future potential within. Sarah’s sculptural representation of nuts, banksias and marri seedpods is a modern take, stepping away from traditional botanical work. The works represent the intense environment Australians live in where the natural disaster of bushfires can be devastating, but also important for regeneration and new life.

All work is designed and produced by Sarah at her studio in Lesmurdie where she hand-builds ceramic pieces using slab, coil, and pinching techniques. She uses the primitive firing technique of Raku with her sculptural pieces and there is personal pleasure, risk, and respect in this rapid firing method. Once high temperatures are reached, the work is quickly taken out and placed in sawdust and paper, where the movement of flames and smoke from burning materials gives a unique serendipity effect to each piece. It is this combination of glaze, fire and form that makes each piece completely unique, and captures the characteristics and intensity of bushfires as natural phenomena.

Sarah finds the finished pieces group well together especially when achieving a juxtaposition of species, textures, and marks, reminiscent of a scientific collection.

Sarah Keirle was born in England and studied at Staffordshire University (UK). Sarah graduated with a BA Hons. 3D Design: Ceramics in 1998 and immigrated to Perth, Western Australia in the same year.

Sarah started professionally in 2000, and now calls Perth Hills her home with her husband, who built her a ceramic studio, where she creates one-of-a-kind Raku ceramic sculptures inspired by the iconic flora in the Western Australian bush. The hand-sculptured forms reflect the unique shapes of the native Australian seedpods, and the primitive firing technique of Raku captures the characteristics and intensity of the natural disaster of bushfires. These pieces embody the biological importance of fire for regeneration and new life.

Sarah Keirle Released 2023

Ceramic – Raku

ROB KETTELS

Time Machine (2023) explores the entanglement of various material and cultural histories that intersect geology, extractivism, culture and time. The sculpture is made from electromechanical components which hold 80 cropped Geological Survey maps of Western Australia. The maps rotate around a mechanical spindle to produce a non-linear animation. To power the rotation, a stainless-steel assembly was built to house a 12v motor, gears and timing belt. The outer assembly gives the work an austere machinery appearance. Many of the geological maps used in Time Machine were produced in the 1970–80s and have the appearance of abstract art. The motion of the maps around the spindle produces an optical illusion creating beautiful colour blends.

The maps also denote Earth processes and mineral compositions that have taken hundreds of millions of years to form—now converging with the present. Yet Time Machine does not represent a simplistic narrative of human versus nature, but

rather the processes through which raw materials, no matter how isolated, are extracted from their surroundings and then commodified. This is achieved via the allegory of the spinning geological maps (that depict remote mining regions of Western Australia).

On one hand the maps are a testament to the rich scientific knowledge in the field of geology. On the other hand, the maps can be read in a way that codifies the upper portion of the Earth’s crust as a potential mineral resource. However, the concept of ‘resource’ is socially constructed— raising the philosophical and ethical question of how knowledge is produced and who benefits from its production. In the case of geoscience, it is multinational mining corporations who benefit, but because of that, I benefit (through paradigms of complicity and everyday life). By making an artwork from the result of mineral extraction, I aim to illustrate the complex and dynamic exchange between the geological, time and culture.

Rob Kettels is an artist and PhD candidate based in Perth, Australia. His art practice aims to problematise how the geologic is imagined and represented in contemporary Western culture. Broadly, his multidisciplinary art practice focuses on geoaesthetics and human-earth relations. Alongside these critical investigations, Rob draws from his lived experience as a long-distance desert trekker into arid biomes of Western Australia. His methodology usually involves site-specific field trips into remote and arid geographies, whereby he documents embodied participation with the site or represents it as installation art. Over the preceding three years he has made sculpture, assemblage, audio-video, photography, installation, painting and undertaken endurance performance in order to express his experience of the geological. In 2017, Kettels received a Bachelor Degree in fine art (First Class Honours) from Curtin University, and in 2018, received a Curtin University postgraduate research scholarship which he is currently undertaking.

Rob Kettels

Time Machine (detail)

2023

Electronic motor, gears, pulley, ball bearing, acrylic, stainless steel and aluminium components, archival ink jet

PAUL MONCRIEFF

From my early days as an art student [circa 1971], and consequent discovery of the modernist project, I have felt a connection to the FORMAL aspects of studio art practice. Many twentieth century artists have been intrigued with the possibilities of materials, their use and how various physical boundaries can be challenged. This is an unbroken lineage through to the 21st century, and on into the future.

I have distilled my practice into bare bones of the visual – systems of form, colour, repetition. I am equally concerned with the presentation and how the work interacts with the architectural space. Increasingly this has developed into an intrigue with the 3 dimension, a continuum of the assemblages that have been developed within the studio.

I tend to work with a variety of plywoods, and this industrial material allows me to reproduce ideas and designs with the simple application of table saw and contemporary fixing systems. I also will sometimes

juxtapose the painted plywood panels with aged and distressed materials – timber and occasionally found metals.

“The acrylic colours, bold and manufactured, precisely applied atop a white undercoat, provide a stark contrast to the natural textures and tones of ply wood. Its knots and movement showcasing an origin story, when combined with synthetic materials, enchant and enhance the other. The audience is left leaning in and out, oscillating between dimensions as they move between artworks through the space. Reaching out toward the audience, the form of even the two dimensional pieces leap forward, toward the viewer, repelling the wall it hangs on.

Moncrieff’s complimentary approach to colour and form, a continuation of the Modernist project, makes this a simply complex body of work to experience.” – TESS, via Instagram.

Moncrieff has been exhibiting since 1978 in various gallery locations in Perth, regional WA and also on occasion in the Eastern States. In this time, he has presented 30 solo, and innumerable group exhibitions. His paintings, drawings and prints are now part of a considerable number of major public and private Australian art collections. He has also curated several exhibitions, at Perth and Albany.

He has previously had a career in university education, lecturing in the area of Painting, Drawing and printmaking Studios, at Edith Cowan University and Curtin University, PERTH WA.

Paul Moncrieff peripheral 6333

2023

Mixed – various found objects/recycled timber

“Since 2010, my practice has evolved into the concrete, the non-objective object, non-figurative formalism. Using utilitarian workable plywood, timber supports, and pre mixed colours of acrylic paint I have assembled many varieties of hard-edged compositions. All work is constructed according to a self-imposed system of size and shape and assembled to offer a suggestion of the seemingly infinite possibilities within this system. The colours are used to compliment the built geometric shapes.”

“You should never underestimate the power of simple shapes…geometry.” –Kevin McCloud 5th June 2016. Grand Designs Irish House programme.

ANNEMIEKE MULDERS

Nature supports humanity’s very existence. It provides the essentials of life and also the wealth of materials that we use for energy and technology development. Nature underpins our technological culture, a culture which ironically is pushing the natural world to its limits.

It is time for humanity to support nature. To cherish its resources and cultivate its flora and fauna. To build a circular economy where culture supports nature and nature support culture.

Here I explore the borders and shared space of culture and nature with a series of sculptural vessels. My ceramic process is one of destruction and rebuilding guiding the narration of the series and allowing new forms to evolve. The process is inherently circular navigating the tension between the orderly and regular (culture) and the organic and messy (nature). The resulting ceramic vessels are dynamic and resemble growth alike a forest.

My thoughts about a future circular economy are visualised using the technological construct, the artificial intelligence system DALL-E. Through creation of these images I hope to show the strengths and limitations of both AI and human civilisation, challenging viewers to contemplate ways we can strive for a more harmonious balance between nature and culture. Together we create a narrative that is simultaneously fragile, robust, complex and simple.

I invite the viewer to contemplate this work from a distance and to examen its surface and imagery from close by. I believe that by bringing attention to how nature and culture are intertwined we can begin to envision a more sustainable future for ourselves and the earth.

Annemieke Mulders studied in the Netherlands and worked as a scientist in various countries while continually taking art evening classes. Her ceramic career started ten years ago in Perth. She makes functional ware with forms that follow the plastic distortion of the clay and vibrant glazes that capture the beauty of the Australian landscape. Recently she repurposes plaster moulds to create sculptural vessels. Annemieke regularly exhibits nationally.

Annemieke is driven by a need to understand the intricacies of world. In the past, this motivated her scientific research, now it inspires her ceramic art practice. She explores the tension between the orderly and the regular; the chaotic and the extreme. Annemieke seeks to create something meaningful by combining both.

Her process is one of destruction and rebuilding – textures and forms are made through dividing, smashing and chiselling, followed by a careful rearranging and reassembly. This method brings a radical freedom and breaks away from conventional design elements. The emerging forms are simultaneously fragile, robust, complex and simple and evoke contemplation.

Annemieke Mulders Intertwined

2023

Porcelain, glaze, iron oxide

HOLLY O’MEEHAN

Holly O’Meehan’s artwork interrogates the harsh effects current agriculture processes have on the natural environment. Inspired by the unique endemic flora and her connection to the landscapes of the South West and the Great Southern regions, O’Meehan combines this fascination with her experience of growing up on a cropping and cattle farm in regional WA. Even though it’s openly known that mono-cropping is highly destructive to the natural environment, it can be a surprise to learn that the largest parasitic plant in the world is found here in our own backyard, the Nuytsis Moojar in Nyoongar, a.k.a the WA Christmas

Tree. Its ability to disguise itself in order to hide its parasitic nature feels uneasy in its familiarity, acting somewhat similar to the image farmers portray to the untrained eye. The agriculture and farming culture from this same region similarly hides behind the ideology that we are “feeding the nation”, yet quietly disregarding the land and resources, redirecting it away from the incredibly unique natural vegetation of the region. Where these iconic trees once covered the entire South West region of WA, they now fill the gaps between farm boundaries and the occasional national park. Has the parasite fallen victim to a newer form of parasite?

Holly O’Meehan

Disguising Our Parasitic Tendencies (detail) 2023

Stoneware ceramic, glazes, underglaze, gold lustre and found soil

Working in her Boorloo/Perth studio, Holly O’Meehan appropriates natural forms in an attempt to highlight the beauty of the hidden and unassuming, exploring the macro/micro worlds of the natural vegetation found within the unique landscape of Western Australia’s South West region. O’Meehan has developed her approach throughout the course of a double Bachelor in Fine Arts and Art & Design at Curtin University (2014) and an intensive Ceramic Skill Set course at North Metropolitan TAFE (2020). She has exhibited in a number of group exhibitions and significant solo exhibitions, Elusive Tactility at Paper Mountain in 2018, and Defence/Defiance at Heathcote Gallery in 2021, as well as prizes such as the 2019 John Stringer Prize and the Joondalup Invitation Art Prize in 2022. Selected for a major 2017 residency with Art Ichol in India, and more recently the highly competitive funded residency at The Farm Margaret River in 2021.

SHERRY PADDON

Fortune Comes to Those Who Wait is a multimedia project that explores the concept of consumerism through a surreal dinner party scene depicted in photography, video, and sculpture. I am intrigued by materialism and how the media reinforces the notion that excessive consumption and opulent lifestyles are symbols of success and happiness, despite the contrast with our everyday realities. In my work, I employ food, plants, and symbolic objects to represent our aspirations and desires, illuminating the fragility of our dreams and how possession becomes a means of preserving them. The constant stream of media messages promoting consumerism reinforces the societal pressure to accumulate and consume, resulting in a tension between our collective desires and the reality of our daily lives.

By creating dreamlike imagery, I aim to initiate a conversation about the impact of consumerism. The contrast between the lavish platters sprouting new growth and their ultimate demise symbolizes the unsustainable nature of excessive consumption and the dark side of possession. Ultimately, my work seeks to highlight the effects of societal messages of materialism and reflection on our collective desires and their influence on the world. Through the use of a visual language that speaks to our aspirations, I aim to encourage viewers to question their relationship with consumption and possession.

Sherry Paddon Quiambao Fortune comes to those who wait (Ed. 1/2) (detail) 2023

Single channel digital video. Filmed and edited by Apurva Gupta. Archival pigment prints

Sherry Paddon Quiambao is a multi-disciplinary artist of Filipino heritage, born and raised in regional Western Australia. Her work explores the relationship between found objects, memory, cultural heritage, and consumption. Using various mediums such as photography, sculpture, and installation, Paddon challenges viewers to reconsider their relationship with possessions and their impact on self-image and status. Her work often touches on themes of identity, belonging, and the complex intersection between culture and consumerism. She completed a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in Sculpture, at Curtin University in 2003, followed by postgraduate studies in art curation and secondary education. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions throughout Australia, the Philippines, and the United States of America. Through her art, she invites viewers to engage with important issues and consider new perspectives.

Every human identity is ecological. We are nature, the environment is not a mere backdrop for humanity, a discrete object. The way we interpret, interact and react to the natural and cultural elements of our environment have both reaching biological and sociological consequences. This work explores the significant shift in our landscape ecology from early settlement to current day and illustrates how over consumption, displacement and disconnection from our natural environment has contributed to the loss of traditional knowledge of land management and manifested an out of balance ecosystem adversely affecting our cultural landscape. On re-searching my own family heritage and colonial land tenure, I was keen to examine the impact of the introduced individual land ownership laws post settlement, especially in relation to the fabrication of fencing barriers around riparian zones, waterholes, springs etc. Exclusion from natural water resources restricted the movement of Noongar peoples severely inhibiting their ability to

carry out centuries old land management practises. With intensive agriculture dominating our natural assets, I considered the saying ‘water is life’. Water is absolute to all human societies, and the flow of ‘living water’ a critical value in the development of land use, regeneration and maintaining a healthy heritage continuity. The simulated dry spring of baked clay reconstructs the importance of a robust riparian landscape for the protection of flora, fauna and environmental values. Its health critically underpins our physical and mental wellbeing. New learning from old is a key component in the regenerative processes going forward. The ‘understanding the past to learn for the future’ is represented here by my interpretations of Noongar William Cox (1908, Katanning shire) and Mitchell Pensini (1998, Geraldton). The re-constructed wattle blossom is a symbol of future fertility emanating from the sharing of cultural knowledge around the landscape.

Born, 1970, Narrogin, Western Australia. Lori is a nationally recognised artist, being shortlisted for over 80 awards and held 26 solo exhibitions. Her art practice is an exploration of self identity and placement within her family’s multifaceted history. It is direct illustration of her response and relationship to her family’s unbroken tenure with the Australian landscape since first settlement. She combines both European and indigenous lineages to her family heritage to express ideas about identity/belonging within her complex history. Combined botanical and figurative genres are prominent and form a distinctive personalised ‘language of flowers’ to aid in expressing one’s inner strengths and transformations. They seek to cultivate positive self and ecological awareness, and to create a narrative around our cultural identity and role within our natural world.

Lori Pensini The Well-Spring 2023

Jarrah, Paraway farm clay, netting, oil on linen

I see one of my own roles as an artist as creating spaces for imagining alternative environmental futures — of creating ‘anticipatory archives’ — not already in existence. I use what I call a strategy of ‘both/and’: acknowledging the role of complicity in social-ecological systems and how each of us struggle to maintain a contingent—yet effective— position as human and ecosystem participant. In February I was given an unassuming tray of about six thousand small photographs of farming properties in southwest Western Australia. Taken from a plane, they are an archive made by humans, for humans. I am the third artist to be custodian (or moral discharger?) of this accidental archive. I scanned in around 1000 photographs and set myself the task of unsettling the eye of settler colonialism with a more ecological vision.

We are water damaged, blurry, eaten, gluedtogether, dog-eared and scratched. We represent a moment in the history of the Wheatbelt — sometime after the 1950s?

But we have lost our negatives and our histories can only be gleaned from occasional comments on our backs.

You are small fragments of experience at the level of the ground in remnant bushland — well below the scale of the aerial view. You are the colour of the soil and the sound of wind in the sheoak.

What happens if an archive is for the future and not just the past? What happens if it speaks forwards as well as backwards — and for the more-than-human? Uncertainty about truth and orientation is at the core of unsettling the present. A thousand portraits of homes from the golden age of the Wheatbelt are partnered with animals on the edge of extinction, paleaorivers and salt lakes, and landscapes of recovery. With its insistent rhythm, this artwork is driven to count the toll, not just of the past, but for what might yet be possible.

Dr Perdita Phillips is an Australian artist working with environmental issues and social change since 1991. Born in Perth/Boorloo she has long concerned herself with interactions between human and nonhuman worlds, working in installation, environmental projects, walking, sound, video, sculpture and publishing. She has exhibited widely including Bird (Climarte) and Underfoot: sTrAtA (Gallery152) in 2023, Energaia (John Curtin Gallery) and Unique States (Holmes à Court gallery at Vasse Felix) in 2022, Make Known: The Exquisite Order of Infinite Variation (2018, UNSW Galleries), Here&Now2018: Besides, it is always the others who die (Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery), Incinerator Art Award (2017, Incinerator Gallery), Another Green World (2017, Western Plains Cultural Centre), Radical Ecologies (PICA, 2016) and Novel Ecologies (2013, The Cross Arts Projects, Sydney). Published books include Fossil III (2019, as part of the Lost Rocks project) and Birdlife (Nandi Chinna, Michael Farrell, Graeme Miles, and Nyanda Smith) with Lethological Press. www.perditaphillips.com

Perdita Phillips wheatbelt anticipatory archive

2023

Looped HD video projection with sound

FIONA RAFFERTY

My art practice is inspired by a lifelong interest in the natural world, and observations of the impact of human intervention on the environment. Through residencies and field work I begin with a particular region, which is site-specific, and my research is informed by anthropological, ecological, and political issues. Place-identity, biophilia, and mining are key components, and my multi-disciplinary practice includes drawing, painting, photography, printmaking, and artist books. I draw with pen and ink on paper, and sometimes include hand-stitching. For the past four years I lived adjacent to the Ramsar listed Creery Wetlands in Mandurah, and my current work focuses on the impact of human

intervention on native and migratory birds, through land-clearing, development, and climate change. Previous work was inspired by residencies in the wheatbelt town of Mukinbudin WA, ‘Ethel Creek Station’, a working cattle station in the Pilbara WA, the Margaret Olley Centre and Tweed River Art Gallery NSW, ‘Calanthe’, the former home of Judith Wright on Tamborine Mountain QLD, Snowdonia National Park Wales, and the London Underground, UK.

I am now based in the Swan Valley region of WA, surrounded by native bushland, abundant birdlife, kangaroo families, and my dog, Zorro.

Fiona Rafferty Flight Plan (detail) 2023

Pen, ink, watercolour and printing on paper

Fiona Rafferty (born Geelong, Victoria) has lived in the UK, Northern Rivers NSW, and currently lives in WA. She has a BA (Art) and MPhil (Media, Culture and Creative Arts) from Curtin University, and received a scholarship to study for a year at Middlesex University, London. In 2023 she was selected for the Bunbury Biennale, WA, and was a finalist in the John Villiers Outback Art Prize, Qld. She won the Emerging Artist Award in the SWAN Awards, WA (2022), and was a finalist in the National Libris Awards, Qld (2020), the Waterhouse Natural Science Prize, SA (2016), and the Adelaide Perry Drawing Prize, NSW (2016). She has exhibited Nationally, and in the UK, and her work is represented in public and private collections in Australia, the UK and USA.

HELEN ROBINS

As an artist, I am interested in exploring the consequences human actions have on our environment. With ocean temperatures rising, coral reefs are experiencing massive bleaching events which can lead to their eventual decline. This artwork aims to explore the need to protect these ecosystems against the detrimental effects of global warming.

My ceramic sculpture, Adaptive Defence represents an imagined future where the coral has evolved to survive against extreme environmental stress. The once vibrant and colourful coral has turned pale and white, a sign of its bleaching and impending death. To survive, it has fused with metal spikes as defence mechanisms against human interference. The coral has now become a hybrid creature, a ghostlike reflection of its former self; the metal spikes a symbol of its last desperate measure to survive.

The process of creating this sculpture involved experimentation with clay and metal, exploring the contrasting properties and how they merge together. The individual pieces of clay are layered to represent the coral with the metal spikes integrated into the ceramic form; creating a sense of organic growth. This piece is designed to highlight the contrast between nature and artificial materials, with the smooth, organic curves of coral juxtaposed with sharp, angular spikes of metal. Through this work I hope to generate awareness about the impact of climate change on our planet and the possible consequences for the future. By blending natural forms with manmade materials, I am suggesting that we must find a way to work in harmony with nature rather than against it.

Helen Robins is a self-taught ceramicist living in coastal Perth, Western Australia.

Working primarily with paper clay, she draws inspiration from the ocean to create delicate and complex sculptures reflecting her own artist vision of the marine environment. She is currently interested in the effects of climate change and the threat to our ocean systems with a focus on coral bleaching caused by raised sea temperatures.

Helen’s interest in ceramics began with community education classes but quickly became a passion as she refined her skills and experimented with different techniques. After 25 years of experience with clay, she established her studio in 2015. She has since gone on to win several art awards and has had work acquired by public and commercial collections. Helen currently works from her home studio; continuing to exhibit regularly in galleries and art shows in Western Australia.

Helen Robins

Adaptive Defence (detail) 2023

Earthernware paperclay, steel

HELEN SEIVER

A mine void is the area of excavation that remains after mining is complete.

It can be defined as a geological form (a hole) for mining ore.

In applying Newton’s 3rd Law, g = f/m ie: Gravity = force over mass, to an notion of mining versus nature, I am considering the Gravitas, the serious threat of Mining and the resulting effect on the nature of our planet.

In this work Newton’s Law considers the suspended void to represent GRAVITY = mass destruction of mining = MASS and economics of mining = FORCE. The design and shape of the individual components of my Void are based on schematic line drawings of mine void planning.

The sides of the void are ‘carved out’ to minimise the sides of the void collapsing; hence the ‘shelves’ seen around the sides of the void.

Nature is seen as the vegetation, trees and bushes clinging balanced precariously to the rim of the void and the ‘clouds’ as the serious threat to us all of declining rainfall and of flood. It is with the force of nature we see mass devastation with flooding, drought, fire etc.

2022/23

Welded

Helen Seiver is a regional artist having graduated in 2000 with BA vis arts (hons). She has work in many public and private collections: Holmes à Court, City of Bunbury, Shire of Mundaring, Horn Collection etc. and has received many awards. Using a variety of mediums Seiver’s processes often involve long and sometimes quite laborious and repetitive processes which allows time to reflect deeply on the concerns and concepts. Making art gives her processes to investigate, and a platform from which to talk about, the things that really matter; be they environmental, political or intensely personal issues.

Helen Seiver THE GRAVITY (GRAVITAS) OF THE VOID. (A void can be defined as a geological form (a hole) for mining ore.)

riggers wire

SALLY STONEMAN

The beauty of the Australian landscape and its ability to evolve and change in a climatically challenged world is a strong inspiration for Stoneman’s sculptural practise.

TREESON explores the impact of human development on the environment through the manipulation of the ‘Rabbit proof’ fencing wire to give form to fencing in the Mulga tree.

This work is part of a larger conversation about our place and responsibility to the environment and to the people that live here.

Sally Stoneman is a West Australian Artist having studied Art Education at W.A.I.T. and completed a Graduate Diploma in Art Education at M.L.C.A.E. in 1982. She studied at the National Art School in 1983 and Sculpture at W.A.C.I.T. in 2012.

She has exhibited numerous times in Sculpture by the Sea in Cottesloe and Bondi, as well as Sculpture at Bathers in Fremantle.

In 2018 she won the Western Australian Sculpture Scholarship from Sculpture by the Sea. A finalist in the Black Swan Portrait prize in 2014, Highly commended for Sculpture at the Wanneroo Art Awards and a Travelling Scholarship to China in 2012.

Her work is in the City of Melville collection at A.H. Brack’s Library; has been a part of the Granite Island Sculpture Walk in South Australia; is currently at Wadjemup Museum on Rottnest; Kings Park Botanical Gardens; Willinga Park, Canberra Airport, ACT; Tianfu Museum in Chengdu China and many private collections in Australia.

2023

Recycled ‘Rabbit-Proof’ fence + Mulga wood

Sally Stoneman TREESON

LOUISE TASKER

Our culture of farming is often in conflict with native birdlife. Past practices of large scale clearing for agriculture threatens the survival of several black cockatoo species: Habitat loss resulting in fewer feeding trees, and competition for rare nesting hollows. We watch the flocks of calling birds, flying low over paddocks and fences, becoming smaller and fewer every year.

Many parrots and native birds peck and eat crops. Emus push through fences, their feathers caught in the barbs, spreading blackberry seeds. Gas guns, to scare, and damage mitigation licences, to shoot, have been a farmer’s option.

If we are to have any hope of maintaining a stable climate, there are hard limits to destroying the ecosystems that sustain us. We are trying to save the planet’s species, but we are also trying to save ourselves and the generations after by preserving the ecosystems that sustain us.

It’s hard changing the system when you’re still practising it. But this is one of our difficult tasks while living in the lag: Giving birth to a more sustainable farming culture.

Selecting horsehair (fibre from an introduced animal), fencing wire, and bullet casings, to represent farming practices since colonization, and juxtaposing them with emu and white tail black cockatoo feathers (sourced from an ethical licenced collection service), I seek to highlight this culture lag and its unsustainable practices.

Louise Tasker’s art is about relationships, with family, with work, with our environments, and the infinite cycles by which we live. These patterns, translated through technique or material, become rhythms that echo a perception, a feeling, an experience.

There are two facets to her practice, the casting and fabrication of recycled metals, and the use of natural found objects. Some of the works are evocative, some can be political…. yet all seek an alchemy between material, process and meaning.

After graduating from Curtin University with BA (Arts) Honours (First Class), Louise’s career highlights include: recipient of an Australia Council for the Arts Studio Residency to Barcelona, winner of the Jewellers and Metalsmiths Group of Australia Concept Award, and Ozgold Award finalist. Louise has exhibited in Australia, England, Italy and Poland, and her work is included in the National Contemporary Wearables Collection.

Louise works from her studio in Smithbrook, Western Australia.

Louise Tasker Farming Culture 2023

Fencing wire, horse hair, emu feathers, stg silver, white tail black cockatoo feathers, brass bullet casings, steel wire

Borrowing from Sanskrit, sutra holds within its meaning the idea of a ‘sacred thread’. Central to the six-framed “sutra” is the idea of interconnectedness of all living entities and the importance of balance and harmony in the natural world. Visual threads formed by patterned motifs comprising of a myriad hand cuts and folds with sequences of colourwaves where gradated tones of gouache are rendered, move lyrically, connecting frame to frame. These directional foldouts pull the viewer into an intimate moment, vacillating side to side to experience the shimmering change of colours. These mellifluous motifs thread across visually organic indentations and stark monoprinted thallus-lichen shapes to evoke an intimately visceral landscape which celebrates and portrays the interconnectedness we have with our environment and how like lichens, we are symbiotic partners in this world. Each step in

the process of making this work gave me a chance to recenter and find balance as each process from the monoprinting, cutting, folding and painting all stemmed from repetitive processes that brought in a sense of contemplation and meditation to the work.

My foster grandfather was a line fisherman and fished only what he needed for the day’s meals. Spending summer vacation days with him as a young child, he would tell us kids stories and customs we needed to adhere to. Respect for the ecology and environment we live in was foremost in his teachings and stories and I carry these through into my adult life.

sutra is a work which quietly observes the terrestrial passing of time and how as agents of change, we can each play a part to enable a brighter future for us, and our children.

Arriving from Singapore in her early teens, Sarah was struck by the quality of the light here in Perth which contrasted with her formative experience of light bound by tropical lushness. Sarah’s work with gouache on paper is delicate and often ephemeral. Driven by observation, ensuing playful intuitive processes, and seduced by the infinite attributes of light and colour to the compositions, the resulting work can bring the idea of intimacy by slowing the eye, ephemerality in the gift of the moment and connection with the beauty of forms. Being raised in a Malay Chinese household and crossed between the Eastern and Western cultures, the experience has contributed unwittingly to an ongoing enquiry of connections.

Her work can be found in private and public collections such as the Kerry Stokes Art Collection, St John of God Art Collection and various shires or cities.

2023

Sarah Thornton-Smith sutra

Gouache and etching inks on paper

LOUISE WELLS

This work investigates the culture of fast fashion, and the influences of social media and FOMO (“Fear of Missing Out”) which encourages us to buy way more than we need, although fails to educate us about the effects on the environment and the low paid workers in this industry.

The work asks us to consider where these items we throw out end up, and to, as Vivienne Westwood said, “Buy less, choose well, make it last.”

The fast fashion industry is responsible for 33% of all microfibres released into the ocean and 10% of total carbon emissions. Poisonous dyes and chemicals pollute waterways, and huge amounts of water are used in the production of cloth. It is harmful both in production and consumption. All of this is detrimental to the health of people living and working in these communities.

Every year, Australians buy on average 56 new items and dispose of 23 kg of clothing to landfill. Only 15% of our clothing in Australia is resold, the rest goes to landfill or overseas. This work consists of garments not considered good enough for an op shop, now diverted from landfill. Its weight equates to less than half the clothing thrown out by the average Australian per year. The 19,000 + squares in this piece, in terms of litres of water, would make only 7 new t-shirts.

Louise Wells is an artist living in Inglewood, WA.

Looking at the lost beauty in the ordinary is a major theme she explores, which has led to a focus on working with recycled materials, mostly textiles. Louise’s work is inspired by domestic life, family stories, observations on current events, and the environmental impacts of textile production.

Louise has exhibited in numerous group and jury selected exhibitions. She is a finalist in Bunbury Biennale 2023, International Fibre Art Australia 2023, Australia Wide 8 2022, twentyFIVE+ 2022, York Botanic Art Prize 2021, Collie Art Prize (CAP) and Australian Textile Award 2020. In 2019 her work was selected for Cultura Diffusa, Como Italy and Fiber Arts IX, California USA. She is a five times finalist in Wearable Art Mandurah, winning the Avant Garde category in 2017.

Recent solo exhibitions include Of Our Time – Ordinary Lives 2018, Suburban Secrets 2021.

Louise Wells Not in MY backyard! 2023 Recycled textiles

ALEX WINNER

Inspired by a study that found microplastics in 93% of bottled water, Ingestion responds to the thematic prompt of the 2023 Bunbury Biennale by reflecting on the damaging effects microplastics have on the environment, the natural world, and the human body.

“The heavy use of plastic packaging, plastic bottles and disposable cups has provoked the issue with direct contact and release of plastic flaking into food items.” (Jadhav et al, 2021)

The installation element was made using exclusively plastic-based products. By placing the objects in the space, the effect creates a three-dimensional extension of the projected image, inviting the viewer to dine, too. The relationship between viewer, space and projected image allows for increased immersion and directly addresses the audience’s role in the cyclical nature of the hazardous environmental effects consuming plastic products has.

By capturing the performance in one, unbroken shot, the focus is solely on the act of consumption. The process of achieving the look of the ingestion of plastic lids was by using an editing technique in post-production to make a seamless transition to create the illusion.

The framing and performance inspiration stems from a viral Andy Warhol video/performance piece of Warhol looking directly at a camera and consuming a cheeseburger in one sitting. By using the same visual cues in a different cultural context, the uncomfortable feeling is the same.

Performer: Caleb Macauley

Cinematographer/Camera Operator: Jakob Wells

Alex Winner’s work consists of using video, photography, sound and installation art. Drawn to these mediums through his background in film production, Winner’s work experiments with using moving images juxtaposed with contrasting audio to create new meaning.

During Winner’s honour’s thesis at Murdoch University, he explored the idea of using sound and video in a way to encourage exploration within a space. By creating immersive, interactive spaces, the relationship between audience, artwork and space was investigated by placing the viewer inside an everevolving piece. This was done by letting the viewer control the parameters of their own experience using motion sensors.

Winner often has a collaborative approach to art making, utilising other creative disciplines such as performance artists, cinematographers and textile artists.

Alex Winner Ingestion 2023

Video, Audio, Plastic Table, Plastic Wrap, Plastic Plate, Plastic Lids

MONUMENTS OF BUNBURY: THINGS IN SPACE

Molly Werner

When entering a gallery space, one tends to choose a direction to walk in. Oftentimes the direction of walking is specifically designed by a curator, or an architect. Aware of this coercion, we might subversively decide to walk our own way. Occasionally, something indescribable will pull us in a different direction.

The day that I encountered Perdita Phillips’ contribution to the Bunbury Biennale: A Cultural Ecology, an unsettling, meditative audio-visual projection, and object-based piece titled wheatbelt anticipatory archive I (2023), something more-thanhuman was guiding me towards it. This “something,” labelled variously with terms such as spirit or flow state, is what Jane Bennett would call thing-power.

As a concept, thing-power raises the status of the more-than-human and emphasises a total sense of kin – that all entities are, “enmeshed in a dense network of relations.”2 While Bennett is speaking of things in terms of their self-organizing creativity, it is useful to think of artworks holding thing-power. As I sat in front of Phillips’ durational work, I allowed its thing-power to pull me in. While the slideshow-like series of images flicked by, selected from a found photographic archive of a WA wheatbelt land survey, I found myself thinking about humans and land-use – the way we cultivate and categorise land – as well as scale and embeddedness. I was reminded of the experience some of us have in planes, how being that high up in the sky reminds us of our smallness

in the landscape, and our strange reaction to that feeling that sees large-scale construction (and destruction) fill up the available space. Simultaneously, I was listening to a handful of pigeons outside of the door to the chapel balcony, flapping their wings inside the trap that has been placed there for them and stretching themselves out in the space that they have found themselves in. There is something curious about space and beings in space. How we must co-exist. How sometimes we cannot.

Spreading ourselves out in space, and retreating, leaves things behind. Think of a campsite littered with the detritus of past campers. These sites allude to the presence of things (humans) that are no longer there. Robert Smithson’s “monuments”3 are sites like this. Walking through the New Jersey industrial town of Passaic, Smithson photographed what he called monuments to entropy. Entropy being the continuous state of flux in a closed system, where no new things are added but change their material form(s). In Smithson’s photographs, the left-behind things become kin with the landscape.

Can left-behind-things become kin with the landscape? What follows is a series of snapshots in time taken from various walks around Bunbury. They are potential demonstrations of things becoming kin with their landscape. Their thingpower gives them a sense of being both out of place, and somehow in exactly the right place.

1. See Judith Barry, “Damaged Goods,” Thinking About Exhibitions ed. Reesa Greenberg, Bruce W. Ferguson, and Sandy Nairne (Verso: 1996), 46-48.

2. Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Duke University Press: 2010).

3. Robert Smithson, “The Monuments of Passaic.” Artforum 6, no.4 (December, 1967).

Clockwise from Top Left

Molly Werner

Temporary Monument, Big Swamp, 16:43 5 August 2022

Molly Werner Monument, 1 Wellington Street Staircase to Nowhere, 12:43 2 November 2022

Molly Werner Monument, William Street Drain, 18:45 2 November 2022

Molly Werner Monument, Hayward St Drain, 15:37 15 March 2022

Molly Werner Monument, Maiden’s Park Reserve, 16:48 24 March 2023

EDUCATION PROGRAMS

Artist Talk: Erin Coates on the Dolphin Discovery Eco Cruise Tour Boat

On Saturday the 1st of April at 1:30pm, Erin Coates and 23 guests boarded the Dolphin Discovery Centre’s Eco Cruise Tour Boat from the beach at Koombana Bay. This special event placed Erin and her art practice in dialogue with the ecosystem of Bunbury’s foreshore. As Erin discussed the development of her interest in the aesthetic potential of the depths of the ocean (as a free diver and artist), the boat cruised along the Bay, passing by the busy industrial Bunbury Port towards The Cut at Turkey Point, where the two rivers (Collie and Preston) meet the ocean, via the Leschenault Inlet. It was here that Erin’s art practice literally converged with its subject matter, as some of Bunbury’s resident dolphin population (averaging at 50, with 100+ visiting each year) approached the boat, breaching the water’s surface in perceived curiosity for the slow-moving vessel. Erin’s artwork on display at BRAG, Swan River Dolphin Bones Series speculatively examines the impact of contaminant levels of leached metals on the population of the Indo-Pacific Bottlenose dolphins native to the Derbal Yerrigan/Swan River by interweaving the depicted dolphin bones with metal-like textures and extensions. In the context of the Bunbury Dolphin Discovery Centre Eco Cruise Tour Boat, Erin’s practice and discussion on that Saturday afternoon highlighted how we might contextualise industrial activity in the local Bunbury area as already alongside the more-than-human world and how we might (re)consider industry as an equally active part of this ecosystem.

Film Screening: Scenes from the Chthulucene

The evening program for the Bunbury Biennale opening celebration was hosted by the Bunbury Regional Entertainment Centre and screened two films that aimed to explore approaches to making kin with our non-human earthlings. The Tree Prophet by Tucker Marder & Christian Scheider, which premiered at the Santa Monica Film Festival in 2018, observationally portrays self-identified tree prophet David Milarch, who has dedicated his life work to re-populating the world’s decimated old-growth forests. Black Cockatoo Crisis was presented by director Jane Hammond who has created a film focussing on the threats posed, and ways humans are working to mitigate these threats, to the three Black Cockatoo species native to the south-west regions of WA. At once global and local, this selection of films initiated what Glenn Albrecht has termed, solastalgia, that is, “the distress produced by environmental change impacting people while they are directly connected to their home environment,” for many of its audience members. Unveiling many of the unseen, or ‘out of view’, aspects of environmental change caused by human habitation and industrial practices over hundreds of years, both The Tree Prophet and Black Cockatoo Crisis encourage small-scale, sustained interventions as ways to form community with our more-than-human kin.

Erin Coates Artist Talk

Panel Discussion: After the Anthropocene

On Saturday 22nd April, we convened a panel discussion at the Bunbury Museum and Heritage Centre with a focus on the topic of Climate Activism in the South West. Invited guests included Wardandi Noongar Elder Bill Webb, feminist participatory action researcher Dr. Naomi Godden, and Bunbury Youth Advisory Council Mayor Mikaela Kerwin.

Facilitated by BRAG Director and social practice artist Dr. Michael Bianco, the conversation included touchpoints such as eco-justice, post-colonial futures, and environmental embeddedness. Taking the exhibition, It Woke the Town Up as the site and departure point for discussion, the panel discussion was then opened to questions from the audience.

Opposite from Top Left Panel Discussion Erin Coates Artist Talk Black Cockatoo Crisis Film Screening 2023

L-R: Naomi Godden, Bill Webb & Dr. Michael Bianco Panel Discussion 2023

ENMESHMENT

“A deep chesty bawl echoes from rimrock to rimrock, rolls down the mountain, and fades into the far blackness of the night. It is an outburst of wild defiant sorrow, and of contempt for all the adversities of the world. Every living thing (and perhaps many a dead one as well) pays heed to that call. To the deer it is a reminder of the way of all flesh, to the pine a forecast of midnight scuffles and of blood upon the snow, to the coyote a promise of gleanings to come, to the cowman a threat of red ink at the bank, to the hunter a challenge of fang against bullet. Yet behind these obvious and immediate hopes and fears there lies a deeper meaning, known only to the mountain itself. Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of a wolf.” – Thinking Like A Mountain, Aldo Leopold.

Ice caps are melting; species are going extinct; the ocean is acidifying; the climate is rapidly changing – the planet is in trouble. While one could say that we have a lot of problems to deal with, arguably there is a singular issue which undergirds all the crises we face – the Western world view. As a society, we default to structures of binaries, framing humans as sperate to ‘nature.’ However, what the myriad of current environmental crises has revealed to the Western perspective, is that our species has never been sperate from the morethan-human world. As many non-western societies have acknowledged for millennia, humans have

always existed within an ecological totality. Like a webbed string wrapped around fingers in a game of Cat’s cradle, we know the truth – everything is connected.

By acknowledging this reality, and the ecological crises which threaten our survival as a species by extension, one could argue that there is a moral responsibility to become entangled in this dilemma, and to examine and engage it completely. To take such an approach is to actively engage in the act of enmeshment, and to submerge into the world through acts, forms, and representations that heighten our awareness of the more-thanhuman condition. As such, Enmeshment is an exhibition which considers the ways that artists engage the more that human world and considers the dynamic relationship humans can have with their environment. From seminal performances by artists such as Allan Kaprow and Stelarc, to more contemporary works by Erin Coates, Honey Fingers & Acid Springfield, Rizzy, and Amy Youngs, Enmeshment draws attention to the ways that artists engage the senses, reframe situations, and immerse their audiences and nurture empathy to diminish the divide between humans and the more-thanhuman world.

Artists Erin Coates, Honey Fingers & Acid Springfield, Allan Kaprow, STELARC, Rizzy, Amy Youngs.

Various Artists Bunbury Biennale Enmeshment

Dr. Michael Bianco, Director, Bunbury Regional Art Gallery

Opposite STELARC

Seaside Suspension –Event for Wind and Waves – Japan, 1981 (detail)

Clockwise from Top Left Honey Fingers & Acid Springfield Soft Vibrations

2022

Amy Youngs

Belonging to Soil: Subterrariums

2022

Erin Coates

Swan River Dolphin Bone Series (detail)

2021

IT WOKE THE TOWN UP

Dr. Amanda Gardiner

It Woke the Town Up is an exhibition investigating the ‘Bunbury Bombing’, a politically motivated attempt to destroy the wood chipping export terminal in the port town of Bunbury in 1976.

Labelled an ‘act of terrorism’ by then-premier Charles Court, the bombing was an attempt by two men named Michael Haabjoern and John Chester to stop the destruction of old-growth Karri and Jarrah forests in the South West.

In the early morning of 19 July 1976, Haabjoern and Chester loaded 1000 sticks of stolen gelignite, timing devices and detonators into a stolen car. Donning stocking masks and armed with a .303 rifle they held up the on-site watchman.

Extremely careful to make sure no one was hurt, the men set three charges around the base of the terminal then drove away with the captive guard to wait for the explosion.

The charges were set to detonate at 5am.

Of the three charges set, only one detonated yet the single explosion was so powerful that it sent debris flying kilometres away, shattering windows in homes all along the nearby Leschenault Inlet.

The blast caused $300,000 of damage but did not halt production for long. Haabjoern and Chester were sentenced to seven years imprisonment with a minimum term of 10 months. The Crown appealed the sentence after criticism of leniency and the terms were increased by three and a half years. The woodchip pile never left Bunbury. It expands and contracts like a living organism, changing scale in response to the truckloads of trees that are delivered and the boatloads that are shipped away. Reaching into the sky like Bruegel’s Tower of Babel, on loading days the pile’s girth is so enormous that bulldozers make a road on its circumference as they chug up and down, shovelling the chips. On these days, the whole suburb smells of sawdust. It Woke the Town Up marks the start of an ongoing creative project, combining new research, printed materials, media, and imagery to present a multifaceted exploration of this pivotal historic event.

BIENNALE 2023 –CULTURE/NATURE – REVISITED

Works from the City of Bunbury Art Collection

In the early 1990’s, the former City of Bunbury Art Collection Committee agreed to develop and expand the City’s Art Collection through the acquisition of artworks by West Australian artists.

In 1993, the first Bunbury Biennale was launched as a new vision. Its aim was to invite established and emerging artists to produce contemporary works and to acquire new works from this exhibition to further enhance and expand the existing Collection.

Another major goal for the inaugural Bunbury Biennale was to challenge and confront audiences with ideas about the nature of art, and ways of seeing the world. It was held with the belief that it would benefit and educate the Bunbury and South West community by providing a broader context in which local art could be viewed and accessed.

Since its inception the Bunbury Biennale has grown into a major art event and become an open platform for artists to present the latest trends in cutting edge contemporary art, pushing boundaries, exploring challenging concepts and stretching limits.

The 2023 Bunbury Biennale is organized around the theme ‘Culture/Nature’, a series of exhibitions invite the public to engage with a wide array of creative practitioners dedicated to critically engaging the environment in a myriad of ways. Revisited forms part of the Biennale and highlights artworks that have been acquired from past Bunbury Biennales. The selected works present a variety of interpretations of nature as subject matter and provide a wonderful insight of the contemporary artistic movements that were current at the time, and how they have developed over the years.

Artists

Penny Bovell, Jo Darbyshire, Stuart Elliott, Helen Foster, Galliano Fardin, Lee Harrop, Thomas Heidt, Catherine Higham, Jarrad Martyn, Gisela Züchner-Mogall, Janis Nedela, Tania Spencer, Tony Windberg.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Bunbury Regional Art Gallery TEAM

Dr. Michael Bianco Director BRAG

Anna Edmundson Operations and Administration Officer

Simon Long Exhibition Officer

Caroline Lunel Curator City of Bunbury Art Collection

Karen Morgan

Noongar Arts Program Officer

Dee Mosca Gallery Officer

Paula Thompson Marketing Officer

Molly Werner Education Officer

Penelope Elliot

Donna Greenwood

Dan Kus

Josef Quinn

Claudia Stiglmayer

Katelyn Whitehurst

BRAG Casuals

CREDITS

Government Partner

Department of Government, Sport and Cultural Industries

Acquisition Panel

Dr Michael Bianco, Caroline Lunel, Councillor Betty McCleary, Dr Donna Mazza

First published in 2023 by Bunbury Regional Art Gallery

64 Wittenoom Street

Bunbury WA 6230

Australia

www.brag.org.au

This publication is copyright and all rights are reserved. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced or communicated to the public by any process without prior written permission. Enquiries should be directed to the publisher.

© Bunbury Regional Art Gallery 2023

Published in conjunction with the exhibitions Bunbury Biennale, Culture / Nature, a series of exhibitions held at the Bunbury Regional Art Gallery and Bunbury Museum and Heritage Centre, 02 April – 05 June 2023.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia.

Title: Bunbury Biennale 2023

Subtitle: Culture / Nature

ISBN: 978-0-6454681-0-6

Other Authors: Dr. Michael Bianco, Molly Werner, Dr. Amanda Gardiner, Caroline Lunel

Editor: Anna Edmundson

Designer: Christopher Young

Photographer: All images courtesy of the artists unless otherwise noted.

Printing: Quality Press

This publication contains the names and images of Indigenous people who may have passed away.

Bunbury Regional Art Gallery is owned and managed by the City of Bunbury