Ecological art can give us a better understanding of nature. What does this look like in times of climate change?

Ecology has always fascinated Australian artists. Think of landscape painters such as Arthur Boyd (1920-1999), who was inspired by nature and dedicated his career and legacy to protecting it.

Boyd spent the latter part of his life painting the Shoalhaven River in Bundanon, New South Wales. Agricultural use of the land along the river was causing erosion and destroying soil, plant and animal life. With increasing tourism and more intensive use of the river, Boyd feared further destruction, so Boyd and his wife purchased land along the river in the 1970s – and gifted it to the Australian people in 1993.

Since scientific studies have shown the undeniable influence of humans on the climate, ecology and art have been linked in new and urgent ways.

Ecological art can communicate the results of scientific studies, create opportunities for community-based interventions, and even serve an independent function in the restoration of ecological systems.

Ecology and Art

If you have ever been to Sydney Park, you have probably visited the integrated environmental artwork “Water Falls” by Jennifer Turpin and Michaelie Crawford.

Water Falls consists of two sets of terracotta troughs arranged in dramatic zigzag lines. As part of a man-made wetland ecosystem, the artwork captures rainwater from the surrounding streets, preventing flooding and providing habitat for native animals. It is experienced as the rhythmic sight and sound of falling water. Ecology as art.

Ecological artists engage the politics, language, culture, economics, ethics and aesthetics of ecology in ways that scientists sometimes fail to.

In 2012 and 2021, Tega Brain developed an artificial wetland system that can also wash dirty clothes. Coin Operated Wetland shows how water, although often rendered invisible by the urban life that sustains it, is always circulating and a part of us and our cities.

Many First Nations artists have pointed to the intertwining of language and land with ecological knowledge.

Quandamooka artist Megan Cope creates sculptural installations that engage with local ecological systems. In her work Kinyingarra Guwinyanba (“a place of oysters”, 2022), she plants sea gardens with oysters to create “a living, generative land and sea artwork that demonstrates how art can physically heal the land.”

Ecological art brings scientific language into the gallery and into our conversations. Using language in different ways can be a way to rethink humans’ relationship with land, water and atmosphere.

Topographies

There are currently two exhibitions in Sydney that present interdisciplinary research on climate change in an artistic way.

Topographies at Sydney College of the Arts is about topography: the study of the shapes and features of land surfaces. Curator Vicky Browne describes topographies here as “the process of mapping out the shape of the world”.

Magnetic Topographies, an artist collective featured in the exhibition, was in residence at Bundanon in 2023. They expand their topographical research to include “avian navigation,” “terrestrial coexistence,” and “repulsive terrain.”

Biljana Novakovic’s Listen for the Beginning (2024) is a huge piece of light blue fabric embroidered with layered colourful words and phrases, an interpretation of the Gooliyari, known as Cooks River, Sydney and sometimes Australia’s craziest city river.

Ben Denham’s work A Topography of Air (2024) is a collection of multisensory ecological communications and interventions. Custom-made electronics, barometric pressure sensors, modular synthesizers and wooden boxes are combined with dried native grasses and “the atmosphere”. We feel like we are in a laboratory – but we are not entirely sure of the experiment or what is being measured.

Alongside this work is another work by Denham. Generalised Diagram (2024) uses the visual language of science in the form of a flow chart: black lines on a white page, pinned to the wall, show feedback loops between oscillators, amplifiers, bodies, politics and the atmosphere.

Denham’s sculpture and flowchart together explain how to sensorially understand features on maps, diagrams and in the terrain. “We see the visual form on a map, we feel “Pressure gradients on our skin,” explains Denham.

Living water

At the University of New South Wales Library, Living Water celebrates 75 years of water research at faculties and institutions across NSW.

“The River Ends at the Ocean” is a collaborative project that explores diverse knowledge about Gooliyari.

In 2021, Aunt Rhonda Dixon-Grovenor, Astrida Neimanis and Clare Britton led a group of about 60 walkers along the concrete banks, restored edges and straightened channels of the estuary, following the tide to Kyeemagh Beach.

At the entrance to the exhibition, a film of Aunt Rhonda Dixon-Grovenor’s walk is superimposed over a flowing sketch by Britton of the Cooks River and its tributaries.

The drawing is based on the report “Cooks River Environment Survey and Landscape Design: Report of the Cooks River Project” (1976) and helps us understand how the river basin and ecological knowledge about it have changed over time.

Another collaborative creative work, Rippon Lea Water Story (2023), explores waters, memories, flora and fauna, and infrastructure at Rippon Lea, a colonial estate in Melbourne in Boon Wurrung Country.

In the dark space of the gallery, we are invited to listen carefully to the sounds of Melbourne’s underground waterways, recorded by special microphones called hydrophones. These underwater microphones were developed by scientists to record biotic, abiotic and anthropogenic sounds in marine environments.

These recordings allow us to hear the sounds of water flowing beneath the city’s concrete surfaces.

Advancing with art and science

Visual artists synthesize and represent different kinds of knowledge and languages.

The exhibitions provide new audiences with the opportunity to engage with ecological science and develop the understanding needed to persuade people and organizations to take action on climate change.