For a decade the art practice of Gavin Malone has been concerned with ecological rehabilitation and cultural interpretation. A former grazing property and thus a degraded ecosystem, the 185 ha property belonging to fellow artist Greg Johns overlooking the plains of the River Murray, has been transformed into what Malone suggests is not just a sculpture park with a Landcare project but actually reconceptualises art as ecology.
Flux2: New Art from Western Australia Brendan Van Hek, Ben Sullivan, Bennett Miller, Helen Smith, Pilar Mata Dupont and Tarryn Gill Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, Perth 18 September - November 2005
The scourge of non-recyclable waste devastating the precious land of the Pacific Islands has become a new subject matter for some of the local performers. A play put on in front of the newly built Parliament House on the tiny Pacific island of Tuvalu marked the islands transition to becoming the worlds first plastic shopping bag free country. Campbell looks at some of the ecological and economic crisis in the South Pacific Islands in the year that was declared The Year of Action Against Waste and the methods which are employed to assist with the educating of such issues.
What does the onset of climate change mean to an artist today? We have known about species extinction for decades, and the death of ecosystems; artists whose work evolved around these issues first emerged during the sixties.
Stills Gallery, Sydney, 3 August - 3 September 2005 Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne, 5 July - 7 August 2005 Greenaway Art Gallery, Adelaide, 23 November - 18 December 2005
Byron Bay-based fibre artist Melissa Hirsch is the first artist to achieve climate neutrality through her involvement with Climate Friendly, a goverment-accredited Australian company which allows businesses and individuals to calculate the climate impact of their energy use. As a result she plans to promote her climate neutral art to corporate clients seeking a more eco-friendly image. Environmental sustainability was the impetus in Hirschs choice of career and has been the guiding force in the trajectory of her development as an artist; to produce art in nature, with nature, about nature.
Jean Bojko is the founder of TeATRePROUVeTe, a project created in response to a desire for a socially inclusive cultural event to be held in the Shire of Nievre in regional France in 2000. Bojko came up with the idea of marrying the 32 smallest villages of the shire with thirty-two artists. The aim was to get the villagers to see their own potential and to build a network with others. The event involved mock burials which took place in the local cemeteries as well as numerous events focused on environmental viability and sustainability as a way to symbolically reinforce the transition of these individuals from craftsmen to members of common life.