‘NatureCultures’
Exhibition Proposal
Blurb
‘Naturecultures’ is an exhibition proposal that has been modified from an assignment I wrote for my Critical and Theoretical Studies class at the end of 2019. I thoroughly enjoyed curating artworks from within and outside the Buxton Contemporary collection to narrate a story/experience. I chose to explore through art our destructive relationship with nature in a hope to inspire people to take action to help heal the human caused devastation to our climate and environment.
Exhibition Concept Overview
‘NatureCultures’ will present a confronting yet empowering exhibition program to be held at Buxton Contemporary Gallery. It will explore, through a non-dualistic approach, the very real possibility of a vastly bleak future for the human population and possible ways of tackling the current climate and ecological breakdown through engaging with ‘natureculture’. Colonial, extractivist human activity has driven our planet into a new geological epoch which is defined by the visible and permanent effects of human impact on all aspects of the environment. The exhibition will be an immersive, engaging experience that will gradually become more optimistic and empowering as one progresses through. Spectacular works drawn from the Buxton Contemporary’s permanent collection as well as outside it, will be combined with a student/institution collaboration where Victorian College of the Arts students will be invited to creatively engage, respond, and shed light on our current collective crisis and how we may remedy it. The exhibition hopes to attract and engage as many people as possible as our current climate crisis is an all-encompassing issue affecting all our futures.
The exhibition will respond to the planet’s current interconnected climate, ecological and social crisis. The current geological era has been referred to as the ‘Anthropocene,’ but this discourse is plagued with heroic, solution-ist, and masculinist narratives that assert dominance over the natural environment and is too broad in calling out the cause of the planetary crisis as not all humans are responsible. Thus, the term ‘natureculture,’ as coined by Donna Haraway in 2003, is more suitable for this exhibition in provoking critical thinking around our relationship with this earth to deeply connect and equate oneself with nature to proactively try and save it. ‘Natureculture’ is a concept that materialised from scholarly interrogation of the dualisms embedded in intellectual tradition, thus driving the exhibition’s non-dualist approach. This will be evident in a resistance of traditional binaries of the natural and the cultural that have long driven capitalist, patriarchal societies whose reductionist, extractivist systems are particularly threatening to the environment and our collective futures. ‘Natureculture’ resists this divide through a synthesis of nature and culture, which recognises their inseparability and will hopefully help visitors understand that these spheres are always/already in relation whereby each co-produces the other.
Katie West, Decolonist Flag I, 2015
Rationale
The curatorial method and focus of ‘NatureCultures’ intends to raise awareness, critical thought and concern amongst the general public, whilst simultaneously addressing the context and involvement of the VCA community. The gallery’s close proximity to the city and other art institutions makes it a melting pot for ideas and people from all walks of life to congregate. Involving the students and faculty of the university in both contributing to the works displayed as well as running public programs throughout the duration of the exhibition, will encourage intergenerational conversation which is imperative to gaining insight into the many ways we may tackle our climate emergency. The recent surge in climate protests globally, like the activities of the Extinction Rebellion group and efforts of Greta Thunberg, combined with environmental scientist’s increasingly alarming statistics, calls for the perfect time and context to exhibit art that visualise, address, and respond to these urgent issues.
The exhibition will be curated through a non-dualist approach which will disrupt traditional boundaries of gallery systems and help aid visitors in understanding the inseparability of nature and culture as a tool to help save our only home from complete collapse. This applies to exhibiting the works of the next generation of budding artists from the university, and assimilating indigenous thought, knowledge, and response into the space. This will be critical to the exhibition as indigenous peoples and artists have already survived environmental collapse, as attributable to colonialism, through their undeniably strong, spiritual connection with the land and each other. The exhibition is hoping to encourage visitors to realise their own affinity with the earth, revealing that they too are a part of nature, not apart from. A destabilisation of the curatorial voice will help create an immersive experience rather than being a typical exhibition walk-through, which will hopefully provoke deep reflection about the visitor’s role in sustaining life on earth. This notion will be reinforced by having the first level of the gallery curated collaboratively between gallery staff and students, attaining agency in how they may respond through their artworks and how they want these displayed, or engaged with. These works will be filled with optimism, light, and energy, suggesting strategies, tools, and alternatives in facing our climate crisis. Whereas, on the ground level of the gallery, the collection’s artworks will be exhibited in a gloomy, dark, melancholic environment full of despair, loss and tragedy to create an emotional journey for the visitor that’ll make a long-lasting impression.
The curatorial method and focus of ‘NatureCultures’ intends to raise awareness, critical thought and concern amongst the general public, whilst simultaneously addressing the context and involvement of the VCA community. The gallery’s close proximity to the city and other art institutions makes it a melting pot for ideas and people from all walks of life to congregate. Involving the students and faculty of the university in both contributing to the works displayed as well as running public programs throughout the duration of the exhibition, will encourage intergenerational conversation which is imperative to gaining insight into the many ways we may tackle our climate emergency. The recent surge in climate protests globally, like the activities of the Extinction Rebellion group and efforts of Greta Thunberg, combined with environmental scientist’s increasingly alarming statistics, calls for the perfect time and context to exhibit art that visualise, address, and respond to these urgent issues.
The exhibition will be curated through a non-dualist approach which will disrupt traditional boundaries of gallery systems and help aid visitors in understanding the inseparability of nature and culture as a tool to help save our only home from complete collapse. This applies to exhibiting the works of the next generation of budding artists from the university, and assimilating indigenous thought, knowledge, and response into the space. This will be critical to the exhibition as indigenous peoples and artists have already survived environmental collapse, as attributable to colonialism, through their undeniably strong, spiritual connection with the land and each other. The exhibition is hoping to encourage visitors to realise their own affinity with the earth, revealing that they too are a part of nature, not apart from. A destabilisation of the curatorial voice will help create an immersive experience rather than being a typical exhibition walk-through, which will hopefully provoke deep reflection about the visitor’s role in sustaining life on earth. This notion will be reinforced by having the first level of the gallery curated collaboratively between gallery staff and students, attaining agency in how they may respond through their artworks and how they want these displayed, or engaged with. These works will be filled with optimism, light, and energy, suggesting strategies, tools, and alternatives in facing our climate crisis. Whereas, on the ground level of the gallery, the collection’s artworks will be exhibited in a gloomy, dark, melancholic environment full of despair, loss and tragedy to create an emotional journey for the visitor that’ll make a long-lasting impression.
Exterior Signage featuring ‘Astrid’ by Xavier Cortada, 2007
Insitu Mockup of ‘Take a Chance on Love’, by Louise Weaver, 2003
Structure/Program
‘NatureCultures’ immersive experience begins right from the beginning, whereby guests will be invited to wear commissioned dystopian face masks made by Mary Mattingly specifically for this exhibition. The masks will have an inbuilt flashlight that will help guide the visitor through the dark, fog filled Heritage Gallery. Wearing the masks into the pitch-black gallery space will create a feeling of a future environmental apocalypse where one may have to wear such a mask to withstand various temperatures or to breathe clean air. Louise Weaver’s ‘Taking a Chance on Love’ installation sculpture will be situated at the back of this gallery where people will observe the flashing red landscape through means of the spotlight on their mask.
Upon entering the main gallery space, there will be the opportunity to remove the masks and proceed through the dimly lit array of artist’s works from within and outside the gallery’s collection. The selected videos, paintings, photographs, sculpture, and digital art will create a spooky, ominous, ghostly atmosphere where visitors are confronted with visualisations of what may lie ahead of us. Some of the works chosen from the collection will emerge in a new light with different interpretations when hung in this particular exhibition setting. Others happen to suitably respond to natural systems, environmental crisis’, human and nature’s innate connection, futuristic visions, and reminders of our past. An eerie soundtrack filled with sounds from nature will echo along the dark painted walls, with the back wall covered in mirrors to reflect the dystopian setting and the visitor within this.
Leaving this space behind, visitors will travel up in the elevator, taking them to the first floor where they will be welcomed by healing optimisms for the future. The enormous elevator will be covered from floor to ceiling in ‘Dear Climate’ posters, completely immersing the visitor (inspired by Bitforms Art Gallery site specific installation, 2016). The posters touch on the “deeper realms of the personal” that appeal to human “pleasure, fantasy, fear desire, sensation, vision, imagination” rather than the overstated personal responsibility of recycling, avoiding plastic and reducing overall consumption. Provoking fear, fantasy, imagination, and discussion, the posters will help craft new kinds of personal engagement with climate change through “thinkivist as opposed to activist” statements.
The elevator doors will open to reveal a light filled space displaying an array of selected student works that could be in any form such as performance, installation, photography, literature, interactive media, digital productions, paintings, or sculpture. This will be a space for students to freely express their thoughts on the future, in a non-dualistic mixing of the geological and the philosophical, nature and culture, of which has long been constructed in binary opposition. By bringing these concepts together in harmony and visualising their youthful light on potential approaches and strategies, the students will create a space that challenges traditional perceptions of museums as agencies and mediators of knowledge.
Buxton Contemporary Gallery will transform into a public forum for discussion, reflection, negotiation and perhaps even controversy in an actively artistic, scientific, social space offering perspectives on navigating our current geological epoch. The artworks will be representative of what ‘natureculture’ means to the students and how they believe in the power of understanding our indivisibility from nature to remedy our future. Additionally, students will be invited to organise public programs and events, which may include forms of collaborations with indigenous artists and thinkers, lectures, workshops, screenings, performances, parties, and tours. These will run throughout the duration of the exhibition to encourage return visits and further inspire intergenerational thought, discussion, and action. This will help strengthen the connection between the institution, students and the wider community, breaking down the traditional, hierarchal structure of gallery curatorship.
Following engagement with the students’ artworks, visitors will be invited to take part in the Ecosexual Bathhouse experience which will be privately set up in the Education and Project Gallery. This immersion into the interactive world of plants, nature, sensuality, and harmony will be like no other, envisioned through the glorious minds of Pony Express led by playwright and performance maker Ian Sinclair and transdisciplinary artist Loren Kronemyer. The Ecosexual Bathhouse looks to intertwine natural and human history using sensors, microphones, and ultraviolet light to sensitise people, inviting them to relate and empathise with their environment in new ways. A motivating sense of ‘saving the earth’, ‘loving the earth’ and ‘securing the future’ will overwhelm the visitor as they indulge in the likes of the pollination gallery, the latest ecoporn and performances by metamorphosing mistresses. At the edge of our ecological apocalypse, Ecosexual Bathhouse transgresses the boundaries of what humans are meant to do with their senses, hoping to heal our degraded earth through erotically sympathising, equating and connecting oneself with nature.
Following the Ecosexual Bathhouse experience, visitors will have the opportunity to gaze at Petrina Hick’s ‘The Chrysalis.’ They will be invited to share their personal response to ‘natureculture’ in light of environmental collapse, and what changes they may ensue in their own lives. Upon exiting down the staircase, David Noonan’s ‘Owl’ will loom at the base of the stairs, standing as a reminder to be wise in their actions going forward. Upon entrance and exit visitors will see Katie West’s ‘Decolonist I’ flag depicting native Australian plants in a new decolonised flag formation which aims to decolonise the visitor’s inner sense of self as they exit the gallery, breathing out the traumas of colonisation and environmental collapse. The open-ended conclusion of the exhibition will hopefully encourage reflection and discussion, turning the insights gained from the exhibition into action.
‘NatureCultures’ immersive experience begins right from the beginning, whereby guests will be invited to wear commissioned dystopian face masks made by Mary Mattingly specifically for this exhibition. The masks will have an inbuilt flashlight that will help guide the visitor through the dark, fog filled Heritage Gallery. Wearing the masks into the pitch-black gallery space will create a feeling of a future environmental apocalypse where one may have to wear such a mask to withstand various temperatures or to breathe clean air. Louise Weaver’s ‘Taking a Chance on Love’ installation sculpture will be situated at the back of this gallery where people will observe the flashing red landscape through means of the spotlight on their mask.
Upon entering the main gallery space, there will be the opportunity to remove the masks and proceed through the dimly lit array of artist’s works from within and outside the gallery’s collection. The selected videos, paintings, photographs, sculpture, and digital art will create a spooky, ominous, ghostly atmosphere where visitors are confronted with visualisations of what may lie ahead of us. Some of the works chosen from the collection will emerge in a new light with different interpretations when hung in this particular exhibition setting. Others happen to suitably respond to natural systems, environmental crisis’, human and nature’s innate connection, futuristic visions, and reminders of our past. An eerie soundtrack filled with sounds from nature will echo along the dark painted walls, with the back wall covered in mirrors to reflect the dystopian setting and the visitor within this.
Leaving this space behind, visitors will travel up in the elevator, taking them to the first floor where they will be welcomed by healing optimisms for the future. The enormous elevator will be covered from floor to ceiling in ‘Dear Climate’ posters, completely immersing the visitor (inspired by Bitforms Art Gallery site specific installation, 2016). The posters touch on the “deeper realms of the personal” that appeal to human “pleasure, fantasy, fear desire, sensation, vision, imagination” rather than the overstated personal responsibility of recycling, avoiding plastic and reducing overall consumption. Provoking fear, fantasy, imagination, and discussion, the posters will help craft new kinds of personal engagement with climate change through “thinkivist as opposed to activist” statements.
The elevator doors will open to reveal a light filled space displaying an array of selected student works that could be in any form such as performance, installation, photography, literature, interactive media, digital productions, paintings, or sculpture. This will be a space for students to freely express their thoughts on the future, in a non-dualistic mixing of the geological and the philosophical, nature and culture, of which has long been constructed in binary opposition. By bringing these concepts together in harmony and visualising their youthful light on potential approaches and strategies, the students will create a space that challenges traditional perceptions of museums as agencies and mediators of knowledge.
Buxton Contemporary Gallery will transform into a public forum for discussion, reflection, negotiation and perhaps even controversy in an actively artistic, scientific, social space offering perspectives on navigating our current geological epoch. The artworks will be representative of what ‘natureculture’ means to the students and how they believe in the power of understanding our indivisibility from nature to remedy our future. Additionally, students will be invited to organise public programs and events, which may include forms of collaborations with indigenous artists and thinkers, lectures, workshops, screenings, performances, parties, and tours. These will run throughout the duration of the exhibition to encourage return visits and further inspire intergenerational thought, discussion, and action. This will help strengthen the connection between the institution, students and the wider community, breaking down the traditional, hierarchal structure of gallery curatorship.
Following engagement with the students’ artworks, visitors will be invited to take part in the Ecosexual Bathhouse experience which will be privately set up in the Education and Project Gallery. This immersion into the interactive world of plants, nature, sensuality, and harmony will be like no other, envisioned through the glorious minds of Pony Express led by playwright and performance maker Ian Sinclair and transdisciplinary artist Loren Kronemyer. The Ecosexual Bathhouse looks to intertwine natural and human history using sensors, microphones, and ultraviolet light to sensitise people, inviting them to relate and empathise with their environment in new ways. A motivating sense of ‘saving the earth’, ‘loving the earth’ and ‘securing the future’ will overwhelm the visitor as they indulge in the likes of the pollination gallery, the latest ecoporn and performances by metamorphosing mistresses. At the edge of our ecological apocalypse, Ecosexual Bathhouse transgresses the boundaries of what humans are meant to do with their senses, hoping to heal our degraded earth through erotically sympathising, equating and connecting oneself with nature.
Following the Ecosexual Bathhouse experience, visitors will have the opportunity to gaze at Petrina Hick’s ‘The Chrysalis.’ They will be invited to share their personal response to ‘natureculture’ in light of environmental collapse, and what changes they may ensue in their own lives. Upon exiting down the staircase, David Noonan’s ‘Owl’ will loom at the base of the stairs, standing as a reminder to be wise in their actions going forward. Upon entrance and exit visitors will see Katie West’s ‘Decolonist I’ flag depicting native Australian plants in a new decolonised flag formation which aims to decolonise the visitor’s inner sense of self as they exit the gallery, breathing out the traumas of colonisation and environmental collapse. The open-ended conclusion of the exhibition will hopefully encourage reflection and discussion, turning the insights gained from the exhibition into action.
(Top)
Marina Zurkow, Dear Climate, 2014–2016, Site-specific installation of 68 posters and 6 audio
works, made in collaboration with Una Chaudhuri, Fritz Ertl, Oliver
Kellhammer, and Sarah Rothberg (Bottom) Marina Zurkow, Una Chadhari and Oliver Kellhammer, ‘Dear Climate’ posters, 2014-ongoing
Pony Express and Performance Space,Ecosexual Bathhouse Liveworks, 2016
Matt Sav, Ecosexual Bathhouse Liveworks, 2016
Petrina Hicks, The Chrysalis, 2011
David Noonan, ‘Owl’, 2006
Suggested Artwork Layout + Floorplans
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Selected Artworks for Display
![Katie West, ‘Decolonist Flag I’, 2015, natural died string and native Australian plants, unknown dimensions]()
![Louise Weaver, ‘Take a Chance on Love’, 2003, high density foam, hand crocheted cotton and lamb's wool, linen, silk, polyester, glass, rubber, plastic, acetate, aluminium, silver leaf, acrylic paint, wood, stone, polyester flowers cut and sealed with high frequency sound waves (recouped from Issey Miyake evening bag), Eclipse lamp designed by Vico Magistretti, The Expresso chair designed by Brian Steendyk, light sound recording, 500 x 365 x 205 cm]()
![Pat Brassington, ‘The Frog’, 1997, pigment print, 70 x 80 cm]()
![Ben Armstrong, ‘The Shape of Things to Come II’, 2006-07, linocuts printed in metallic pigment on hand-dyed paper, etched glass, 9 prints, each image 77 x 57 cm; each frame 81 x 61 cm]()
![David Griggs, ‘Zombie Kiss’, 2009, acrylic on canvas, 290 x 183 cm]()
![Bill Henson, ‘Untitled 1997/98’, 1997/98, typeC colour photograph, 127 x 180 cm]()
![Bill Henson, 'Untitled 1998/1999’, 1998/99, typeC colour photograph, 100 x 122.2 cm]()
![Bill Henson, ‘Untitled 1997/98 (labelled nocturne)’, 1997/98, typeC colour photograph, 127 x 180 cm]()
![Tony Clark, ‘Kufic Landscape’, 1991-1995, oil on canvas board, 9 panels, overall 61 x 409.5 cm]()
![Julie Dowling, ‘The Elements: Ow'wa (Water)’ and ‘The Elements: Wajjanoo (Fire)’ and ‘The Elements: O-thero (Earth)’ and ‘The Elements: Windhoo (Air)’, 2008, acrylic, polymer and ochre on canvas, 120 x 100 cm]()
![Xavier Cortada, ‘Astrid’, 2007, sea ice from Antarctica’s Ross Sea, sediment from the Dry Valleys, and mixed media on paper, 30.48 x 22.86 cm]()
![Tracey Moffatt, ‘Invocations #1’, 2000, photo screen-print, printed in colour ultraviolet inks on textured Somerset satin paper, 96 x 121 cm]()
![‘Invocations #5’, 2000, photo screen-print, printed in colour ultraviolet inks on textured Somerset satin paper, 124 x 105 cm]()
![Simryn Gill, ‘Standing Still’, 2000-03, type C photographs, 20 of the 116 photographs: each 30.1 x 46.1 cm image; 42.1 x 48.1 cm sheet]()
![James Morrison, ‘Freeman Dyson’, 2008, oil on canvas, 5 panels overall 40.75 x 255 cm]()
![Ricky Swallow, ‘Picture a Screaming Sculpture’, 2003, piezo pigment print, framed 79 x 56.5 cm]()
![Callum Morton, ‘Continental Girls, Paris’, 2001, digital print, 59.4 x 84.1 cm]()
![Shaun Gladwell, ‘Maximus Swept out to Sea (Wattamolla)’, 2013, single-channel highdefinition digital video 16:9, colour, silent 12min 33 sec edition 3/3]()
![Shaun Gladwell, ‘Maximus Swept out to Sea (Wattamolla)’, 2013, single-channel highdefinition digital video 16:9, colour, silent 12min 33 sec edition 3/3]()
![Tony Clark, ‘Portrait of the Neandertaler and Portrait of Charles Darwin’, 2006, acrylic and permanent ink on canvas board, 2 panels, overall 50 x 80 cm]()
![Patricia Piccinini, ‘Nature's Little Helpers - Bodyguard (for the Golden Helmeted Honeyeater)’, 2004, silicon, fibreglass, leather, plywood, hair, 150.2 x 47 x 60 cm]()
![Pierre Huyghe, Nymphéas Transplant (12.21.1914), 2014, Live pond ecosystem, light box, switchable glass, concrete, 189.5 × 113.3 × 103.5 cm]()
Bibliography
Anderson, Kayla. (2015). Ethics, Ecology and the Future- Art and Design Face the Anthropocene.
The MIT Press, 48 (4), 341-342.
Braddock, Alan., & Ater, R. (2014). Art in the Anthropocene. American Art, 28 (3), 2.
Ecosexual Bathhouse, Pony Express. (2019). Retrieved from http://helloponyexpress.com/ecosexual-bathhouse-home
Gioni, Massimiliano. (2011). The Limit’s of Interpretation. The Exhibitionist , 4, 19 & 22.
Invocations 1 from the series Invocations. (2001, Unknown Month). Retrieved from https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/415.2001.1/
Malone, N., Ovenden, K. (2017). Natureculture. The International Encyclopedia of Primatology, doi:10.1002/9781119179313.wbprim0135.
McDowell, Tara. (2015). Space as Support: On Curating, Education and Architecture. Studies in Material Thinking, 12, 3.
Merrick, Helen. (2017). Naturecultures and Feminist Materialism. In Sherilyn MacGregor ’s (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Gender and Environment (p. 101). New York: Routledge.Möllers, Nina. (2013). Cur(at)ing the Planet—How to Exhibit the Anthropocene and Why. Rachel Carson Center, 3, 60 & 62.
Zurkow, M., Chaudhuri, U., Kelhammer, O., & Ertl, F. (2015). Unthinking Survivalism: Inner Climate Change. Postmedieval- A Journey of Medieval Cultural Studies, 6 (4), 439.
Anderson, Kayla. (2015). Ethics, Ecology and the Future- Art and Design Face the Anthropocene.
The MIT Press, 48 (4), 341-342.
Braddock, Alan., & Ater, R. (2014). Art in the Anthropocene. American Art, 28 (3), 2.
Ecosexual Bathhouse, Pony Express. (2019). Retrieved from http://helloponyexpress.com/ecosexual-bathhouse-home
Gioni, Massimiliano. (2011). The Limit’s of Interpretation. The Exhibitionist , 4, 19 & 22.
Invocations 1 from the series Invocations. (2001, Unknown Month). Retrieved from https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/415.2001.1/
Malone, N., Ovenden, K. (2017). Natureculture. The International Encyclopedia of Primatology, doi:10.1002/9781119179313.wbprim0135.
McDowell, Tara. (2015). Space as Support: On Curating, Education and Architecture. Studies in Material Thinking, 12, 3.
Merrick, Helen. (2017). Naturecultures and Feminist Materialism. In Sherilyn MacGregor ’s (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Gender and Environment (p. 101). New York: Routledge.Möllers, Nina. (2013). Cur(at)ing the Planet—How to Exhibit the Anthropocene and Why. Rachel Carson Center, 3, 60 & 62.
Zurkow, M., Chaudhuri, U., Kelhammer, O., & Ertl, F. (2015). Unthinking Survivalism: Inner Climate Change. Postmedieval- A Journey of Medieval Cultural Studies, 6 (4), 439.