The exhibition Novel Ecologies presents a group of artists who contemplate a relationship with a more vital world.  Whether looking for greater attunement to the continuities of the earth or to the solace and joys of an unruly embodied life, they have consistently sought to cultivate the natural in all its guises. Working across performative registers and through processes that reflect humour and uncertainty, they have often interrogated the ways in which they apprehend their place in the scheme of things.

These artists deploy shifting speaking positions and are attracted to the ties between the drawn, the written and the uttered. Their activities are characterised by a complicating of the relationship between the visual and truth and, although working in ways that acknowledge broader political and philosophical questions, their approach is more poetic than didactic. 

The term ‘novel ecology’ refers to ecological systems that have only recently come into being and that consist of previously unseen combinations of species and interactions. These novel systems, which now comprise the majority of the world’s ecosystems, profoundly challenge traditional philosophical and disciplinary distinctions. While two of the artists have taken these emerging systems as their subject, novel ecosystems arguably provide a metaphor for the practices of all the artists in the exhibition. With their hybrid nature and contested status, such systems offer connotations of not only newness but also strangeness and discomfort. As an exhibition title, the phrase ‘novel ecologies’ also brings to mind the role of fiction and narrative in the processes of the artists.

Jasmin Stephens, Sydney

Curated by Jasmin Stephens.