As Art Guide Australia enters its 25th year of production, we’re looking back on conversation-shaping pieces from our archive. With a focus on the natural world, our increasing climate anxiety and anthropocentrism, we look back over the past decade of environmental and art coverage.
This process has been illuminating in remembering art’s power to show us different sides of a problem, or to reflect a new aspect of beauty, signalling a new appreciation. While the environment is now a permanent concern within all aspects of political, economic, social and cultural life, the manner in which we engage with the natural world is always changing. It is also important to acknowledge that many art practices, tools and materials, are derived from natural resources. It affirms the enduring inextricable relationship between art and nature.
Art Guide asks Artists: How does it feel to be an artist working with nature in these times?
Art Guide asks five artists—Nici Cumpston, Karla Dickens, Jenna Lee, Janet Laurence and John Wolseley—to tell us.
Man&Wah on being part of nature
While the changing climate is proven to inspire, so is nature’s evolution and growth. Creative partnership and twins. Man&Wah’s show, Propagate/Germinate/Bloom reflects the interconnectedness with all beings and their cosmic cycles. Cher Tan highlights that the “underlying need for survival, adaptation and improvement are shared experiences” between humans and plants.
An interview with Deborah Kelly: Creating a queer, science fiction, climate change religion
Curator Ineke Dane in conversation with collaborate and multi-disciplinary artist Deborah Kelly on her CREATION project—the establishment of a queer, science fiction, climate change religion.
Are galleries and museums doing enough?
Writer Andrew Stephens takes a critical look at Australia’s gallery and museum spaces’ sustainable business models. With art institutions and their responses to climate change under public scrutiny, it is important to acknowledge progress but also question the initiatives long-term impact.
From 2016, Hayden Fowler’s show, New Romance: Art and the Posthuman, seeks to delve into the emotional effects of climate degradation. Referring to environmental collapse as “the train of destruction,” Fowler says: “A good place to start is how this affects us and how we feel about it.”
Suggested Reading
Hoda Afshar wins the 2025 National Photographic Portrait Prize
In its 18th year, the National Photographic Portrait Prize celebrates photographic portraiture from emerging and established artists, highlighting what it means to be Australian, through photographs of its people.
Art Guide Australia
The regenerative power of spring
Spring1883, Melbourne’s interactive and immersive fair returns, celebrating the collision of contemporary art installed amongst 18th century decor of The Hotel Windsor.
Anna Carlsson
Let’s Play
Gabriela Burkhalter’s The Playground Project at Incinerator Gallery reinvents the typically serious installation space, inviting children to play, reminding us of its importance within the arts.
Briony Downes
Sophie Penkethman-Young’s Scroll Play
Sophie Penkethman-Young dives into the cursed, chaotic and charming depths of the online world to create inquisitive artworks exploring technology, the internet and capitalism with humour.
Michelle Wang
Evie Adasal: Nature through colour and shape
Evie Adasal’s show Light and Space unveils a series of works that look at the intersection of design, light and space at The Garden Gallery in Sydney.
Art Guide Australia
Lisa Radford’s Circular Logic
A new exhibition by Melbourne painter Lisa Radford is animated by a deep interest in the way ideas circulate—and the connections between people that unfold over time.