The art world is finally catching up with Janet Laurence. For decades, Laurence has probed human relationships with ecology by merging science-based observation and investigation with a visual poetry of alchemy, transparency, beauty and loss. In works that are often site-specific or site-responsive and grounded in extensive, collaborative research, she has invited us to pay attention to species loss and the Great Barrier Reef’s vulnerability due to climate change, among other issues.
It’s proposed that we’re now in the Anthropocene era, defined as an age of global human impact on pretty well every part of the natural world. While geologists wrangle over how to define the Anthropocene and when, exactly, to backdate its commencement, the art world has embraced the Anthropocene proposal as a constructive framework for considering our predicament. Janet Laurence’s work sits squarely within this new and urgent consideration.
Laurence has in the past used art to advocate lyrically for attention to, and action on, ecological calamity. Her upcoming new work at Hugo Michell Gallery in Adelaide, titled From the lives of plants, aims to open up an expansive, macro-view of our relationships with plants. Her broad ranging subject matter includes medicinal and herbarium plants as well as trees in environments such as the contested Tarkine wilderness region of north-west Tasmania. Laurence’s layered, transparent botanical images draw from and rework series she has made during her longstanding engagement with the plant world. They focus on the vulnerability of the crucially important living organisms that humans both depend on and currently jeopardise. “I hope the concerns of fragility will be understood,” says Laurence, “and the vital importance of plants in our lives be communicated.”
From the lives of plants
Janet Laurence
Hugo Michell Gallery
23 November – 13 December
Past meets present in Leyla Steven’s latest exhibition, now showing at the Art Gallery of New South Wales and co-curated by Artspace. The Australian-Balinese artists adopts a collaborative approach to restitution, scrutinising the systems of conservation and documentation we have inherited.
Developed in 2022 by Artback NT as part of Apmere Mparntwe—the Australian Ceramics Triennale— touring exhibition Clay on Country, showing now at New England Regional Art Museum, showcases the diversity of ceramics in the Central Desert.
About Face is a smart piece of marketing. The new book on portrait painting from Australia and New Zealand has a mission to change buyers’ minds about the field. But as Jane O’Sullivan discovers, any sales pitch wears thin if it’s repeated often enough, and the close attention to how portrait painting is received by the market means that other important conversations fade to the background.
Melbourne-born figurative artist and ceramicist Rob McHaffie takes a global view of human idiosyncrasy. His biggest exhibition to date, now showing at Bendigo Art Gallery, covers over a decade of his painting practice.
Helen Mueller has been printmaking for 25 years, but moving to Hobart four years ago shifted her focus to the local natural environment. Now her delicate prints, made with materials foraged from the forest floor, are showing at Handmark Gallery.
A new event has arrived in Melbourne’s cultural calendar with the inauguration of the Melbourne Sculpture Biennale: an exhibition that aims to showcase the breadth and diversity of contemporary sculpture in Victoria.
