Artist Michael Gresalfi shares new artworks using leaves, seeds and other natural materials to produce zoomorphic or anthropomorphic masks and sculptures that echo our early ancestors and an approach to the world that recognises, “We are all related.”
1,560 words: estimated reading time = 6 minutes
I am excited by an artistic theme I have been pursuing these past months. I have named the series ‘Flora-Persona.’
Using only natural materials, including plants, trees and associated leaves and seeds, and avoiding the use of any manmade materials during the creative process (such as paints, adhesives, and dyes), I purposefully manipulate plants and other flora in a zoomorphic or anthropomorphic manner.
Relying solely on Nature’s bounty is an artistic departure for me in some ways, yet a continuum of my focus on addressing the rising environmental damage, including climate-related disruptions, which our industrialized world has wrought.
Inspired by my research in support of my painting entitled ‘Wood-Wide Web’ (which I previously presented on ClimateCultures in my post with Eva Strautmann), I became acutely aware of the ability of various tree and plant species, along with fungi, to communicate and share resources with one another in a symbiotic manner.
‘Wood-Wide Web’ portrays a forest, field, or meadow not merely as a collection of competing individuals in a shared location, but rather as an interconnected community where resource sharing and communication play a significant role in the health and resilience of the entire ecosystem.
Mitakuye Oyasin: we are all related
My research led me to read about the Mother Tree Project. This large-scale, decade-long research effort led by Dr. Suzanne Simard at the University of British Columbia, revealed that neighboring trees and plants are in communication with one another via an underground network of fungi that resembles the neural networks in our brains.
I was astonished to learn that in one study, Simard documented that a Douglas fir tree that was injured by insects appeared to send chemical warning signals to a Ponderosa pine tree growing nearby. The pine tree then produced enzymes to protect itself against the nearby insect invasion.
To me, a form of collective consciousness was in play within the web of life, across at least two Kingdoms. In biological taxonomy, life forms are organized into hierarchical groups: Kingdoms are at the top, with phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species being progressively lower tiers.Fungi are in a separate Kingdom from trees and plants, yet they support one another in a mutually beneficial way.
Not so with respect to humanity, the alpha species in the Kingdom of Animalia. I began to see more clearly that we don’t support the interconnected web of life, and in fact we continue to disrupt the very symbiotic fabric that the wood-wide web illustrates.
During my daily walk in the woods behind my home, I began to consider more thoughtfully how alienated we all are from the natural world, and I began to ponder how a conscious wood-wide web of interconnected life that surrounds me might view humankind. Yes, not a comforting thought.
The artistic concept of ‘Flora Persona’ formed slowly. My evolving viewpoint was also informed by a Lakota phrase, “Mitakuye Oyasin” (“We are all related”). The phrase expresses the idea that every living entity shares the same divine origin and life force, and that humanity is part of a complex reciprocal web of existence, rather than separate from, or superior to, nature.
My artistic interest was thus stimulated by both non-Western and ancient beliefs concerning the shared web of life and by my newfound understanding that plants and trees have some form of elementary consciousness, as demonstrated by their ability to communicate across species, genus, families, and all the way up the hierarchical groups, to include across the two noted Kingdoms.
Reaching back to our roots in art
Both climate and human culture, including artistic expression, have intersected in many ways throughout our species’ course of time. In this evolving series, I delve deeply into our ancient past for artistic inspiration. I suggest that we have been creating art across the various climate epochs we have inhabited, since times immemorial. I believe that both the flora and fauna available in long-ago times provided source materials used to create art, back into earlier hominin eras.
It is reasonable to assume that humans have been making art from biodegradable materials, including masks, figurines, and sculptures, for more than one hundred thousand years.
Masks and sculptures have been my primary focus to date. My artistic goal is to present man-manipulated natural elements in a manner that harkens back to our early ancestors.
With respect to cave paintings, the earliest known artistic expressions for both Homo sapiens and Neanderthals, consisting of non-figurative symbolic markings, are more than 70,000 years old. They are still in existence today, due to their isolation and protection from the weathering elements. Other art, made from natural materials and not contained within caves, clearly has not been preserved.
One of my flora-persona series interests is using burdock (Arctium lappa) seed heads to create extinct local animals that were plentiful in my region of Maryland, USA during the Woodland and Archaic Periods — such as the wooly mammoth and the cave bear. It is my contention that such natural materials were used to create art by these ancient native ancestors, and indeed perhaps as far back as our early hominin ancestors.
Burdock plant and collected seed heads, as well as a few examples of my ‘Burr Art ‘, are presented below:
Plant masks: viewing how our relatives might see us
With respect to making human-like faces from plant leaves, I was inspired to begin this Flora-Persona series when pondering the wood-wide web and, particularly, the nascent consciousness documented via chemical communication networks formed between fungi, plants, and trees.
These leaf masks are not necessarily made to be worn. Rather, they are meant to present these wonders of nature as a member of our distant family, aligned with the Lakota phrase “Mitakuye Oyasin”: we are all related.
I continue to experiment with different plants, seeds, leaves, and tree bark, all picked up along my daily walks in my neighboring Black Hill Park. I find myself drawn to creating leaf masks that present the viewer with an unsettled view of how we humans might be viewed by our distant plant relatives, such as displaying sorrow, shock, disappointment, and anger. These sentiments seem very proper to me, considering the continuing harm we cause to the interconnected web of life.
Below are three photos. The first shows how I applied juice to several of my leaf masks, a natural dye from ripe purple pokeweed berries that I had gathered.
The final photos show a large 36” x 36” canvas I painted and then displayed, with four of my leaf masks within its four quadrants, followed by close-ups of the masks.
From 2026, ClimateCultures is inviting members to say a sentence or two about how they use AI in their work and in their posts for us. We will be exploring this here and at our ClimateCultures & more Substack.
Michael — “I used Gemini AI as a background search tool — looking for other examples of both my ‘burr art’ and ‘leaf art.’ Frankly, not much out there — at least from my initial research.”
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Michael adds: “A young friend from Scotland, after looking at my burr art, brought to my attention the annual ancient event called the ‘Burryman,’ which happened to occur mid-August. The Burryman is a centuries-old Scottish folk tradition where a local man is covered head-to-toe in thousands of sticky burdock burrs and paraded through the area.” Find more at Wikipedia.
You can see Michael’s work with fellow ClimateCultures member, artist Eva Strautmann, in their post The Wood Wide Web – Fruitful Collaboration, which features both artists’ paintings on the topic.
This piece for the Ecological Disciple by Lenore Three Stars, The Way Forward: Mitakuye Oyasi — A Worldview (11/6/26) explores the value of an approach to our shared world that starts from the position that “We are all related” (Mitakuye Oyasi can also mean “All my relations.”)
More on the Mother Tree Project, founded by Dr. Suzanne Simard, can be found at The Mother Tree Project & Program, a research and outreach initiative housed in UBC’s Faculty of Forestry & Environmental Stewardship, rooted in the idea that forests are deeply interconnected systems, not just collections of individual trees.
An artist who seeks to incorporate art with climate change data, and whose work in encaustic medium, glass paint, oils and acrylics includes 'Our Changing Planet'.
Artist Andrew Howe shares a collaborative project with fellow artists and migrants to bring together creativity, community and heritage, building trust, reframing narratives in an era of climate crisis and showing we are all earthlings, connected with nature.
2,230 words: estimated reading time = 9 minutes
At a time when the ground beneath us is shifting — politically, ecologically, socially — what does it mean to belong?
Environmental crises are intensifying and so is human movement — quietly, unevenly, and often without recognition. Creative practice has a vital role to play in response: not simply to draw attention to change, but to hold space for connection, dignity, and shared experience.
Hey! Earthlings! emerged from this context as both a project and a provocation — an invitation to rethink how we connect across difference, and how art might help cultivate belonging in an age of displacement.
Beginnings — from idea to collective action
This project began as an idea some years ago to invite people who have moved across borders, or with connections to other places through family and heritage, to join with us and share stories, sounds, and creative responses through walks and making. A simple idea, but multi-layered and rich with potential to help participants build stronger connections to local nature and heritage and, perhaps, find a new sense of place and belonging in Shropshire.
As conversations developed, a core team formed: myself, as an artist working in sound, painting, printmaking, and other media; Jill Impey – an artist working in video, sound and printmaking; and Jean Atkin – a poet and writer. Together, under Participate Contemporary Artspace CIC (now Participate Co-labs), we shaped the project and secured funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund in Summer 2024. After a period of careful planning, our activities got underway during Spring/Summer 2025.
Hey! Earthlings! unfolded amid increasing social division in the UK and growing hostility toward migrants and refugees. Against this background, the project took on a deeper significance: to offer a counter-narrative grounded in generosity, creativity, and welcome.
“The project challenged the idea that we live in a world of ‘not enough’. In reality, the Earth is abundant, and people naturally want to contribute meaningfully to the places they live and without the negative narrative and fear-based leadership in the world, humans would naturally share without fear.” — Amanda Jones, Founder of Shropshire Supports Refugees
Climate Change and the movement of people
Practitioners engaging with climate themes cannot ignore migration.
The relationship between climate change and migration is complex, but the global effects of both phenomena are undeniable. Extreme weather events — floods, storms, droughts — are already forcing millions to move. Slower environmental changes, such as desertification or rising sea levels, impact on livelihoods too. The frequency and severity of these events are increasing.
UNHCR estimates indicate that tens of millions of people are displaced each year by sudden environmental events, while projections produced by the World Bank indicate that by 2050, hundreds of millions could be internally displaced due to long-term climate impacts.
These figures reduce human lives to statistics and do not capture the lived experience of losing home, identity, culture, agency, assets and dignity and the search for belonging.
This is where art has a humanising role to hold spaces where people can speak, create, and connect.
Walking as method: reconnecting through landscape
We held three Hey! Earthlings! creative events at each of two pairs of locations in Shropshire, offering important natural and historic heritage to explore by walking together:
Old Oswestry Iron Age Hill Fort and Oswestry Memorial Hall
Doctor’s Field countryside site and Darwin House, The Mount, Shrewsbury (Charles Darwin’s birthplace and childhood home).
These are all located within or very close to the towns of Oswestry and Shrewsbury, and so were relatively easily accessible, with the potential for participants to return again in future.
Each of the events comprised an artist-led walk followed by a creative workshop.
We were inspired by artist Henna Asikainen and her use of walks in projects with refugees and migrants. Walking offers a shared rhythm. It dissolves hierarchies. It allows for informal conversation, chance encounters, quiet reflection and freedom to explore the surrounding landscape.
The group bonded through creativity and shared experience, taking opportunities to translate for each other and share food and song whilst gathered around a fire.
Each walk started with a grounding meditation. We then listened to the river and trees, we foraged, shared stories and words about nature, and played parachute games. The group(s) learned about local history and nature, sharing oral histories, making films and co-creating art.
After scrambling over steep ramparts to the top of the Old Oswestry Hillfort, we used a compass at this 360-degree viewpoint to orient ourselves to local landmarks and distant homelands.
These multi-sensory walks enabled people to compare common or shared experiences from other places, and find meaning, empathy and compassion.
“Being in nature evokes a sense of home and belonging (the trees are not lost): the wind is the wind, the rain is the rain, the sun rises for all the stars and moon are the same ones their families see across the world. This reinforced the idea that humans are children of the Earth and of the stars. The Earth has no borders; birds and fish do not need passports.” — Amanda Jones, Founder of Shropshire Supports Refugees
Hey! Earthlings! Expressing belonging through creativity
Following the walks we returned to workshop venues to respond creatively.
The approach was intentionally open, flexible and welcoming. We offered printmaking, drawing, writing, small book-making, and other collaborative activities, allowing participants of all ages and abilities to engage in ways that felt comfortable, safe and meaningful.
The workshops were not set up as places of instruction, but as opportunities for exchange. Participants brought their own knowledge, skills, and creative traditions. It was a delight when two young Ukrainian participants asked if they could lead some creative sessions during the workshops — an offer we embraced and celebrated.
The shift from facilitator to co-creator crucially challenges the notion of participants as recipients and instead recognises them as contributors and artists with knowledge to share.
The resulting artworks were vibrant, layered, and deeply personal. They spoke of journeys, memories, loss, resilience, and joy. They reflected not only the challenges of displacement, but also the richness that diverse communities bring to local contexts.
Building trust: the role of an ethical framework
Underpinning the whole of our project was an ethical framework devised by Jill Impey. This guided our delivery to ensure everyone involved felt safe and welcome, providing a reference or set of prompts to guide actions and relationships throughout from beginning to end.
The ethical framework aims to embed respect, honesty and understanding in working with participants, with our supporting organisations and with each other. When working with people who may have experienced trauma, displacement, or marginalisation, the stakes are high.
Hey! Earthlings! Ethical Framework.
The framework emphasises:
Empathy and compassion as foundational values, cultivating a culture of care
Inclusion and accessibility to remove barriers to participation
Respect and honesty in all interactions
Agency and consent, ensuring participants retained control over their stories and contributions
Reciprocity, recognising that exchange must be mutual, not extractive.
This framework was not simply theoretical. It informed practical decisions — from how we structured workshops, to how we developed relationships with partner organisations, to how we shared outcomes.
It also provided a crucial anchor for the team, offering a shared language and set of principles to navigate complex situations.
Partnership and participation
The project was made possible through a network of partnerships, including community organisations, cultural institutions, and local authorities.
Participants came from a wide range of backgrounds: young people from Bulgarian schools, asylum seekers from countries including Afghanistan, Iran, Sierra Leone and Vietnam, newly settled Ukrainians, and individuals connected through refugee support networks and community groups.Each event was tailored towards the particular group attending.
We were very fortunate to be able to appoint two experienced community co-ordinators, Anna Martin and Marina Churm. During project planning, we consulted with various community groups to gauge interest and shape the activities for the events.
Both Anna and Marian proved invaluable to the project as they engaged so positively with groups they had existing connections with and with other community leaders who could help link to a wider network and invite people to work with us. Building trust takes time, sensitivity, and existing relationships. Their work ensured that participants felt welcomed, informed, and supported throughout the process.
The team were supported by local artists, Jamila Walker Thomas and Niki Holmes, and project evaluator and mentor, Cerin Mills.
Meaningful engagement cannot be rushed or assumed. It requires investment in relationships, and often collaboration with those who already hold trust within communities.
Sharing responses: rethinking the ‘Cabinet’
We showed the work made at the events in a travelling cabinet at exhibitions in local libraries and museums. These took place at Oswestry Library; Gateway Arts and Education Centre, Shrewsbury Library and Shropshire Archives. The mobile cabinet is made with reclaimed furniture and is able to host and display a range of materials, sounds and video. Its many drawers, compartments and fold-out doors invite visitors to interact with the cabinet and explore for themselves.
Cabinets like this one have long been used to collect and display objects deemed unfamiliar, unusual or exotic — often telling stories about people rather than with them. We aimed to do things differently by inviting the participants to have a stake in curating the exhibition and deciding how to present their work on their own terms.
Rather than turning lives into curiosities, this Cabinet asks us to be curious with empathy — and to reflect on how we might tell richer, more respectful stories in the future.
Shared responses also included a series of collaborative poems edited by Jean Atkin, a short film edited by Jill Impey and a series of soundscapes of stories, reflections and field recordings edited by me. The soundscapes were installed as audio trails at Old Oswestry Hillfort and at Doctor’s Field in Shrewsbury, and can also be streamed from the Participate website.
A Field Guide to Connecting
Towards the end of the project, we prepared a Field Guide to Connecting: a resource for sharing our experience to help other practitioners deliver multi-cultural community arts and heritage projects effectively.
The Guide is aimed towards:
Artist peers/creative practitioners
Community workers and organisations
Fundraisers seeking funding for similar projects
The Guide provides some key reference sheets, such as the Ethical Framework and Ingredients for Success, which include prompts and practical advice. This is supplemented by information from our Hey! Earthlings! project describing our approach, supported by sample documents.
The document is designed not as a fixed methodology, but as a flexible, adaptable resource — something that can be used, questioned, and reshaped. It moves beyond theory into practice, offering grounded insights into what works, what challenges arise, and how they might be navigated.
Hey! Earthlings! Field Guide to Connecting
Reframing migration: from crisis to contribution
One of the most powerful shifts within Hey! Earthlings! is its reframing of migration.
“Many displaced people are treated as passive objects, moved like pieces on a chessboard. Used for political games and leverage and discarded when no more use. This results in adding to their deep grief, a sense of betrayal, and a loss of agency. It can feel as traumatising for them as the reason why they are here — just in a different way. Reframing migrants as contributors, creators, and community members is vital for their healing and for the communities that receive them.” — Amanda Jones, Founder of Shropshire Supports Refugees
Too often, migrants and displaced people are positioned as problems to be solved, burdens to be managed, or victims to be pitied. This narrative not only dehumanises individuals but also obscures their agency, creativity, and potential contributions.
By contrast, Hey! Earthlings! foregrounds participants as creators, collaborators, and community members, and aims to foster more inclusive communities. Our project offered alternative narratives to dominant, often divisive discourses and engaged with global issues through local, embodied experience.
Hey! Earthlings! offers an invitation to recognise ourselves as Earthlings – a condition we share with every living organism inhabiting and depending on a single, fragile planet.
You can explore Hey! Earthlings! at the project pages on the Participate Co-labs website — including a download of A Field Guide to Connecting, an 8-minute video, a guided grounding meditation and two audio trails of Old Oswestry Hillfort and Doctor’s Field, consisting of collaborative poems performed by Jean Atkin, shared stories and reflections on the events at the Hillfort, and a soundscape of an imagined Iron Age village. This series of soundscapes was edited by Andrew Howe using field recordings made at the Hillfort, and poems created using words by participants at events and edited by Jean Atkin.
Participate Co-labs (formerly Participate Contemporary Artspace) is an artist-run community interest company, set up in 2015 by Jill Impey, Elizabeth Turner and Keith Ashford to create space for artists to work and exhibit in Shrewsbury, Shropshire.
Shropshire Supports Refugees was established in 2016 to bring relief and support to vulnerable families displaced by unrest in their home countries relocating to Shropshire.
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From 2026, ClimateCultures is inviting members to say a sentence or two about how they use AI in their work and in their posts for us. We will be exploring this in future posts here and at our ClimateCultures & more Substack.
Andrew – “I occasionally use AI for some functional, time-saving tasks like transcribing spoken word recordings or helping to reduce word count in written drafts before I re-edit into my own style. It can be useful to provide simple, clear summaries or comparisons between options when I have gathered and checked material myself, as I don’t fully trust AI with factual research. In my artist practice, I often move between analogue and digital processes, which I control, but I don’t like the aesthetics of AI-generated imagery and I don’t find it very effective in developing creative ideas.”
An interdisciplinary artist and project manager using walking and mapping to explore how people interact with places, drawing attention to human entanglements within a multi-species environment.
Artist Evgenia Emets shares the development of her Eternal Forest sanctuary vision into its latest phase as the Seed of Eternal Forest, with opportunities for artists, scientists and thinkers globally to become a movement and mutually supportive network.
2,100 words: estimated reading time = 8 minutes
ClimateCultures editor Mark Goldthorpe has followed Eternal Forest since 2019 and, for this post, shared questions with Evgenia as she was drafting it.
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“Eternal Forest is a living commitment that reminds us across generations: we are nature, and by regenerating forest, we regenerate ourselves.”
Looking back at your decision to start Eternal Forest, what was your inspiration for this, and what did you set out to achieve? How do you feel about that looking back now?
My original inspiration to start Eternal Forest came from witnessing the deep disconnect our culture has created between forests and people. I began Eternal Forest in 2018, six months after moving from the UK to Portugal, and shortly after witnessing the aftermath of devastating fires that destroyed large areas of land here.
These were not just forest fires. They were the result of pervasive monocultures, especially eucalyptus plantations, which have profoundly altered the landscape, increased its vulnerability and reduced its resilience. My initial question was to explore how we might reconnect humans and forests, not only through art, but also through remembering and reactivating our sacred relationship with forests.
Much of my inspiration came from seeing that for millennia, Indigenous and traditional communities across the world have lived in deep reciprocity with their natural environments, holding forests as spiritually significant and relational beings. The understanding that our material and immaterial cultures come directly from forests became a foundation for my work.
In the early years, I created the vision for an Eternal Forest Sanctuary — a physical space (reforested or restored and protected) focused on biodiversity and natural habitats, created through art with communities as long-term stewards of this forest. While my experience and practice are rooted in Portugal, where I live, I see the intentional creation of forest spaces, which we can call sanctuaries, as necessary and timely.
Looking back now, I can say that dedicating my time to Eternal Forest has opened many possibilities in my artistic practice. It revealed new paths of knowledge about forests, showed new ways of learning and being with this wonderful and complex organism. It also opened new relationships with people and organisations: scientists, artists, researchers, and regenerators of many kinds. And artistically it offered me a completely different medium — I started exploring how forest itself can be a methodology and what I could do differently with my art if forest were my studio, my medium, my collaborator and my gallery.
As the project evolved, and as I evolved with it, my perspective also shifted. In the beginning, my focus was more on what was missing and where the gaps were. Gradually, this changed into uncovering and witnessing the beautiful possibilities that already exist in our relationship with forests around the world. Whether we encounter healthy forests or forests in need of restoration, there is always a way to experience joy, to lean into the deep unlearning and receive wisdom directly from the land and its beings.
“We are forest, and we are not separate from it” — this core perspective led me to explore subjects such as forest sentience, plant intelligence, finding ways to communicate with nature and being led by the land while working on projects.
Embodying deep connection
What have you learned so far that was maybe a surprise? Or what have others brought to the project?
One of the most surprising experiences for me last year was realising how deeply we are connected to the land through our bodies, our psyche, our imagination, and our emotions. Intellectually, this is something we already understand, or at least we think we do. But it was only through working closely with the land, especially while walking with the land and designing Eternal Forest in Faia Brava, that this understanding became fully embodied.
I began to sense how intrinsically interconnected we are, almost like entangled bodies that, once they have encountered each other, remain in communication. What happens to the land happens to us, and what happens to us also affects the land. When we work with land that has been disrespected or shaped by extractive behaviours, we feel that impact in our own bodies and inner landscapes.
The healing that takes place through restoration and through re-revealing the land’s beauty is mirrored by a healing within our own psyche and physical being. The experience of pain, the witnessing of beauty, the awe of natural phenomena, the sensual moments of being in close touch with the beings of the land, the spiritual closeness of encountering a rare animal — all that goes both ways, it’s a constant conversation. And then how all of that can be woven into practice, into artwork, linked back into the loop of co-regulating and co-evolving.
I am still exploring creative ways to tune more deeply into this field, and to find forms of expression that allow me to transform and alchemise these experiences and share them with others by creating sanctuaries, trails, poetry, and landmarks.
The Seed of Eternal Forest
What is the latest phase of work? What comes next?
One of the latest phases of my work is the creation of the Seed of Eternal Forest in Faia Brava in Portugal. The Seed represents a beginning. It is usually a small-scale intervention that initiates a much longer process of an Eternal Forest Sanctuary on a bigger size land.
In this case, we are working with a conservation organisation in Portugal called Faia Brava, on a very beautiful site along the wild and ancient Côa River, a UNESCO heritage site, with 30,000-year-old engravings of wild animals dotted around the river valley from the hunter-gatherer era. It is such an inspiration for any artist to be connecting with this ancient land. We are working in a context of ageing and declining rural populations, severe deforestation and land degradation, and extremely low rainfall, with conditions that increasingly resemble a semi-desert landscape.
The first intervention we created is a 30-metre-diameter Seed. This is a symbolic moment that emerges from working closely with the land: observing it, listening to it, and understanding the ecosystem, including which species might arrive and which might remain over time. Our next phase is to go through the process of developing an artistic regenerative design for forest and ecosystem restoration across a much larger area of 10ha, a process that will unfold over many years.
When I approach design, I ask myself: What is the experience people will have when they visit this place? What is the experience of the local community and their relationship to the land? What kinds of experiences can other artists have here, and how might they contribute to the evolution of Eternal Forest and Faia Brava? Another important question is how younger generations will interact with this place, and how they might become stewards and guardians not only of this specific area, but of the wider surrounding landscape, which requires long-term care and attention.
The idea for the design of the Seed in Faia Brava is a symbolic labyrinth, an infinite loop tracing a four-petal meandering path. It takes you through several turns that mirror the inner journey of the pilgrim, the psyche of the land, and the land’s own long story.
Trees, bushes and other plants selected for The Seed. Click for larger images.
The Seed holds trees, bushes and plants chosen for their white blossom, but also being native plants from this area. The idea is that as you visit this Eternal Forest in any season, the Seed always presents itself in colour — a variation of white, where every plant is medicine for the land, animals, and each other. Everything in the Seed is designed to attract biodiversity — pollinators, wildlife — and to create a deep experiential space for humans.
I am further developing designs and possible interventions for different locations. At this point, I am increasingly interested in creating concrete, physical projects that are co-created in collaboration with land and communities, rather than focusing solely on visual artworks.
What follows in the coming months is the formalisation of this work through the organisation Eternal Forest, which was registered in December 2025. Over the past year, and continuing into this year, much of the focus has been on developing projects and creating fundable proposals together with communities, landowners, and land stewards.
What is your vision for Nature Connectedness?
When we speak about nature connectedness, I feel it is important to acknowledge that the term itself already implies separation. To say that we need to ‘connect with nature’ suggests that nature is something outside of ourselves. In reality, we are not separate from nature, but we are living the great illusion, as we have disconnected ourselves from the understanding that we are part of it.
We have moved very far away from seeing ourselves as embedded within natural systems. For me, this is why creating physical spaces is so important. These spaces allow us to create conditions where we can return to harmony with a place, learn directly through practice with the land, and be in direct, embodied relationship with a specific landscape over long cycles of time. Only then we can truly embed ourselves into the land, just like an animal does — find out own paths, find our own rhythm, find our own sacred place, find our own home within the land again.
Inviting all: artists, scientists, thinkers
Is there a way for other ClimateCultures members to reflect on this work? Maybe to get involved?
There are several ways for ClimateCultures members, artists, to reflect on the work and to get involved.
First of all, Eternal Forest is held together by a set of questions that I hold personally and that we also hold collectively as an organisation. This is the first year that Eternal Forest is formally operating as an organisation, and while we are building this new structure, we are also opening the space for reflection and dialogue around these questions.
We are inviting artists, scientists, and thinkers to imagine together with us how Eternal Forest can become a movement and a mutually supportive network. How can artists anywhere in the world catalyse and create their own Eternal Forest with their local communities? And how can the Eternal Forest ‘mother tree’ organisation support them over the long term?
This year in September, we will host an Eternal Forest camp at The Gathering in Portugal, a gathering for regenerative culture. I warmly invite everyone to join. We will release invitations in March, and alongside this, we will be running a series of online conversations. These will be spaces to reflect, contribute, and connect both artistically and philosophically with the community.
In the meantime, people can follow the project by subscribing to our Substack or joining our Telegram channel.
As we establish our first four sanctuaries, we will start opening art residencies.
The success of Eternal Forest depends on people around the world who raise their hand and say, “We have land, with or without forest, that needs protection, and we feel the local community is ready to engage. We want to create a legacy that lasts.”
We are open to collaborating with artists, art foundations, curators, landowners, public institutions, conservation organisations, rewilding initiatives, and tree-planting projects. So I invite everyone who resonates with this work to follow the project, connect with us online for now, and, over time, to become part of this co-creation journey.
Find more
Discover more at Eternal Forest — which includes the short film below on Eternal Forest in Faia Brava 2025 and other videos and art — and on the project’s Substack and Telegram channel.
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From 2026, ClimateCultures is inviting members to say a sentence or two about how they use AI in their work and in their posts for us. We will be exploring this in future posts here and at our ClimateCultures & more Substack.
Evgenia — “I use AI to transcode my speech because the way I write a lot of the time is I speak (sometimes walking in the land!). Then I edit my text. Once in a while, I use AI selectively for research — more technical and comparative. All the stories, images and illustrations are original.”
An artist intersecting land-art, sound and visual poetry through experiences, forests, artist books, calligraphy, performance, objects and community engagement, and whose 'Eternal Forest' integrates ecological thinking.
Visual artist James Aldridge shares his art and research on neuro/queering nature, helping us all to explore how valuing different perspectives and learning from divergent experiences can expand our ways of seeing and being with the natural world.
2,570 words: estimated reading time = 10 minutes
In Spring/Summer 2024 I carried out a residency with SPUD, a New Forest-based arts organisation. SPUD have been supporting residencies by artists who are exploring Queer Ecology in some way, for the last few years, funded through Arts Council England.
In my proposal I wrote:
“I believe that the sensory and systemising differences experienced by Autistic/ADHD people… can provide us with inspirational perspectives and awareness of ecological and social systems, which can be communicated to the wider community through art… I want to promote a valuing of different perspectives and learning from divergent experiences, deconstructing inherited ways of seeing and being with what we have come to call Nature, and developing new models built on dialogue and relationship.”
Titling the residency and the resulting installation Neuro/Queering Nature, I included a forward slash to allow Queer and Neuroqueer to sit together, drawing on both experiences/identities in my research, and in my work with LGBTQAI+ and autistic young people.
This work with SPUD forms part of my emerging Neuroqueer Ecologies research, which in turn grew out of the Queer River research project, set up in 2020, and about which I’ve written for ClimateCultures in the past.
Neuroqueer Ecologies is a term I coined and an area of research that I have continued to develop, starting with my own experience of places as a neuroqueer person, and drawing on the ways that I experience places and make sense of the resulting sensory information, using my arts practice to map and share my relationship with other beings. In this I draw on the writing of Nick Walker:
“I originally conceived of neuroqueer as a verb: neuroqueering as the practice of queering (subverting, defying, disrupting, liberating oneself from) neuronormativity and heteronormativity simultaneously. It was an extension of the way queer is used as a verb in Queer Theory; I was expanding the Queer Theory conceptualization of queering to encompass the queering of neurocognitive norms as well as gender norms…”
Neuroqueer: An Introduction – Nick Walker
Neuro/Queering nature to open up experiences of place
For the Neuro/Queering Nature residency, I wanted to take the trappings of Natural History study and layer them with neuroqueer experience, Neuroqueering the concept of Nature as something that we name, classify, collect, and experience as separate to ‘us’ (us being those humans viewing the world through a Eurocentric lens).
While at SPUD I walked with a river called Avon Water, including the bogs and mires that feed into it, and the marshes that it flows into as it reaches the coast. I drew and wrote with collected clays, recorded sound and video, and set up a camera trap for animals to record themselves.
“Unsurprisingly there are many different types of wetland in Britain. As with the apocryphal fifty words for snow, the lines of differentiation are considerably blurred. Marsh, bog, swamp, mire, fen, carr… The kind for which the New Forest is most famous are known as lowland acidic valley mires… Cranes Moor, Duck Hole and the wonderfully named Slap Bottom: there are hundreds.”
Goshawk Summer, James Aldred
Whilst following the passage of water through these wetlands, I also wrote, drew and applied collected materials onto natural history illustrations taken from books bought in charity shops, layering the ‘official’ images and descriptions with my own immediate response to water, heather, curlew, clay.
Working with the Together, Make Art group (the young people that I mentioned above), and artist Hannah Buckingham, I supported the young artists to explore their embodied experiences of the Forest, and their identities as human animals, through collage, mapping and wearable artwork.
Neuro/Queering Nature was about opening up space to facilitate and communicate different experiences of place, and of what we have come to call Nature, through playful and experimental processes. It definitely wasn’t about swapping one set of rules and classifications for another. I also wasn’t originally planning on working with another river, but water is such a good teacher when it comes to blurring boundaries and cutting across binaries. It refuses to be contained.
In between walking and making, I read a lot, and three books stand out as having informed my thinking and my experience of the New Forest:
Goshawk Summer by James Aldred – I was so inspired by James’s descriptions of time spent in the Forest, the exploration of language used to name its different parts, and the way he writes about the Forest as a place that is wild, protected and man-made all at the same time.
Underflows: Queer Trans Ecologies and River Justice by Cleo Woelfle-Hazard – I kept returning to passages of this book that looked at rivers from both a queer and indigenous perspective, and from the perspective of beavers or salmon as well as humans.
Empire of Normality: Neurodiversity and Capitalism by Robert Champion – a brilliant book which makes so much sense, essentially (this my take on it) looking at the development of the concept of normality, in relationship to human difference, and the impact of models of work and education that prioritise productivity and profit, over wellbeing and creativity.
One paragraph in particular from Robert Champion’s book has stayed with me:
“A radical politics of neurodivergent conservation is also consistent with a radical politics of environmental conservation. After all, it has been the same logics, the same system, that has ravaged the biodiversity of the planet as has sought to eliminate the neurological diversity of humanity…”
Empire of Normality, Robert Chapman
What insights is our society missing from ignoring the voices of autistic and otherwise neurodivergent people?
What if we extend our sense of what is normal and desirable to include sensory and processing differences that might provide us with an expanded awareness of our relationship with non-humans?
Focusing on ‘normal’ ways of seeing and being with the world, that fit within what is understood to be acceptable human behaviour, whilst affirming the human/nature binary, and increasing economic growth no matter what the cost to both human and ecological wellbeing, hasn’t done us any favours so far. In fact I’d say that the inability to directly perceive ourselves as interconnected with the rest of the world is what prevents us from seeing the damage that we are doing until it’s too late.
Holotropism — an experience of oneness
So what can someone like me offer? I’m poking my head up above the parapet a bit here. I’m not claiming that autistic people are the saviour of humanity, or aligning myself with the idea of neurodivergence as a superpower, just that we might bring a different awareness of the place of human bodies and actions within the wider web of life.
Autistic people are often described as being disordered (i.e., not normal). Our differences are medicalised, our abilities pathologised. My experience is that I build up a sense of the world and the relationship of its parts, through being extremely sensitive to sensory information, and by focusing on particular areas in depth. I don’t tend to trust inherited models of understanding the world, and prefer to construct my own from the bottom up. I am also very sensitive to other people’s emotions and intentions, contrary to many people’s preconceptions of what autism looks like.
This ability to focus intently on one subject or one element of experience is sometimes called ‘monotropism’. In addition, artist Hendl Helen Mirra offers up the term ‘holotropism’ to describe an experience of oneness. A sensitivity to everything around you that can be a bit of a nightmare (for me) in a crowded room or shopping centre, but can offer a sense of belonging and a dissolution of boundaries in a less human-dominated environment (e.g., the bogs and marshes mentioned earlier).
“Synthesising monotropic theory with deep ecology and holistic anatomy, we feel we have found a multi-dimensional, spacious, edgeless terrain under the monotropism map. We are calling it holotropism. This perspective may elucidate the high co-occurrences of synaesthesia, mirror-touch, dyspraxia, and hypermobility among us autistic people.
“To be holotropic is to have wide open sensory gates. To participate in/as the immense world without becoming overwhelmed, we holotropes have two central methods: in, by hyperfocusing our attention on one sensory or cognitive path, and as, through synthesising our experience into coherence. A sense of wholeness occurs through both of these processes — less consciously in hyper focus, more consciously in coherence.”
Holotropism: a multi-dimensional, spacious, edgeless terrain, Hendl Helen Mirra
More-than-human collaborations for neuro/queering nature
Since my time at SPUD I’ve moved on to new places and opportunities, including a residency with Groundwork Gallery, as one of almost 20 artists taking part in the Ground Up extraction-themed programme this Summer, and now exhibiting at the Ground Up exhibition in Kings Lynn, Norfolk.
In Norfolk I continued to focus on wetlands, this time looking at the impact of the extraction of animal bodies from wetland and marine environments (through whaling, the hunting of beavers for fur, meat and castoreum, and wetland birds for ‘sport’, feathers and taxidermy).
To make sense of the human impact on wetlands, and how we might collaborate with other animals to reverse some of the damage, I’m currently considering what Neuroqueer Ecologies can bring to inter-species collaboration, how it’s done and what might emerge out of it, in this time of climate breakdown. I’m taken by the term ‘collaborative survival’ used by Anna Tsing, and the potential within ‘passionate immersion’:
“Passionate immersion can take many forms. At its core it involves attentive interactions with diverse lifeways. Beyond viewing other creatures as mere symbols, resources, or background for the lives of humans…
“Artists have also become core participants in scholarly projects that question conventional approaches to speaking for Nature, exploring opportunities for immersion in the lives of others…”
Multispecies Studies: Cultivating Arts of Attentiveness, Eben Kirksey
Through my Neuroqueer Ecologies research, and inspired by the work of other neuroqueer artists and researchers such as Kai Syng Tan, I’m starting to explore what happens when neurodivergence is decolonised and valued, and in turn impacts upon how we perceive and place ourselves within multi-species communities.
As Joris Lechêne writes in Decolonising Autism:
“The emergence of the conceptualisation of autism (and Aspergers) is ‘rooted in socially constructed ideas of normality, intelligence, excellence, disability and productivity, and those notions are connected to the colonial ideas of anti-Blackness, patriarchy, and capitalism’ (Lewis, 2021)…. Furthermore, Quijano (2007) specifies that decoloniality can be understood as the struggle for liberation from all forms of oppressive power that leads to inequality, discrimination, exploitation and domination.”
At the moment I’m exploring how human-beaver collaborations can enable humans to learn from the indigenous, pre-colonial knowledge of beavers, previously hunted to extinction and now being reintroduced to the UK, either unofficially through ‘beaver bombing’or within enclosures, waiting for the government go-ahead to set them free.
Whilst in Norfolk we visited Wild Ken Hill’s beaver enclosure, and I followed that up with a visit to the Norfolk Rivers Trust beaver site at the headwaters of the River Glaven. I’ve since tracked down my own local Wiltshire beavers, living wild in and around the Bristol Avon, and have been looking at the intersection of human and beaver infrastructure, as beavers re-make places through dam and canal building and the incorporation of man-made structures and materials.
Dams and lodges in Norfolk included a brick and a Muntjac deer skull, and incorporated the ruins of a WW2 sewage treatment facility, whilst those in Wiltshire included a wooden pallet and a warning sign from a nearby construction site. Beavers don’t recognise the perceptual barriers and boundaries that humans often use to divide, order and classify, and as a neuroqueer maker, I feel a real kinship with, and a desire to learn from them.
My work in the Ground Up exhibition represents the beginning of this relationship with beavers. Titled ‘The Beaver and the Whale’, it documents my research into some of North Norfolk’s rivers, and their connection to animal extraction/local extinction and reintroduction.
It’s not the first time I’ve sought to collaborate with non-humans, and considered the threshold at which such work might appropriately be called collaboration. My photographic series ‘The Ash Looks Back’ for example, informed by research into Ash Die Back Disease, considered the tree’s perspective by strapping camera traps onto ash trees and allowing their community of life to document themselves.
Similarly, my installation at SPUD brought together photographs of animal footprints and camera trap footage of deer, ponies and foxes, with birdsong and river clays, to give a voice to the network of human and non-human inhabitants that makes up the Forest.
“Thinking with beavers and rivers and mountains and salmon, out in the watershed commons, I have sketched a way to transfigure what anthropologist Anna Tsing calls ‘capitalist ruins’ into substrates for new models of life. Practices of world-making with beavers and salmon unveil the multi species commons that is always-already there, in the land, ready for human acknowledgement and recognition.”
Underflows: Queer Trans Ecologies and River Justice, Cleo Woelfle Hazard
Find more
This short video shows James’s Neuro/Queering Nature exhibition from his SPUD residency in the New Forest:
And you can explore more at Queer River, James’s practice-led research project, and his website. His previous ClimateCultures posts include A Queer Path to Wellbeing, and he also reviewed for usCreative Engagements with Ecologies of Place, the book co-authored by fellow member Iain Biggs.
James is showing work as part of the ‘Ground Up’ exhibition until 14th December at GroundWork Gallery, King’s Lynn, England. ‘Ground Up’ is the first of two exhibitions formed out of works of art made in response to a GroundWork residency with the underlying theme of Extraction. A second exhibition, ‘Ground Water’, will run from July to September 2025.
In this January 2024 post for The British Psychological Society, Decolonising Autism, Joris Lechêne offers advice for research and practice drawing on his experience as a trainer in anti-racism, bias, and decoloniality who has lived experience of autism and ADHD.
Nick Walker’s post (2015, updated 2021) Neuroqueer: an introduction describes how the concept of neuroqueering came to inform her thinking, embodiment, and approach to life.
Multispecies Studies: Cultivating Arts of Attentiveness is a 2016 research paper by Thom van Dooren, Eben Kirksey & Ursula Münster (Environmental Humanities 8 (1): 1–23) that explores “the cultivation of ‘arts of attentiveness’: modes of both paying attention to others and crafting meaningful response.”
You can explore the work of SPUD, the arts and education charity where James undertook his New Forest Neuro/Queering Nature residency and which creates opportunities for people to engage with art, architecture, design and the environment; also, the Norfolk Rivers Trust’s The Beaver Project.
You can find more on Kai Syng Tan, the artist and researcher James mentions has inspired his exploration of decolonising of neurodivergence, at her website.
A visual artist working with people and places, whose individual and participatory practices generate practice-led research into the value of artful, embodied and place-based learning ...
Kim V. Goldsmith presents a collaborative essay with fellow artists whose new exhibition, Regional Futures: An Entangled Existence, explores Regional Australia through intersectional feminism, adding personal reflections on her creative approach to sparking conversations about being good ancestors.
3,000 words: estimated reading time = 12 minutes
The main body of this post is a collaborative essay that Kim V. Goldsmith has produced with fellow artists Joanne Stead, Anna Glynn, Tracy Luff, Jane Richens, Laura Baker and Tania Hartigan and Regional Futures creative producer, Narelle Vogel, for their joint exhibition Regional Futures: An Entangled Existence at the Basil Sellers Exhibition Centre in Moruya, NSW Australia, from 26th October to 23rd November 2024. And Kim has added a personal reflection at the end of this post, exclusively for ClimateCultures.
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Regional Futures: An Entangled Existenceis a collection of artworks informed by an intimate knowledge of Regional New South Wales, created by seven female artists of different backgrounds and experiences who choose to live and work regionally. Through an intersectional feminist lens, the artworks creatively mine the provocations, contradictions and tensions underlying the issues and opportunities impacting the future of Regional Australia—a vast place of great complexity and diversity.
Installation photos of the Regional Futures exhibition at Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, Western Sydney, 2023
As a way of understanding, intersectional feminism recognises how different aspects of our social and political identity intersect to influence how we think about and experience the world—through race, gender, and/or sexuality or other identifiers. These are the voices that tend to fall between the cracks in the conversations about our future. Even within this collection of works, they’re not fully represented.
Regional is defined by Australian authorities as all the towns, small cities and areas beyond the major capital cities. For those who understand the regions, they aren’t just shaped by the lack of people and traffic, or the mountains, hills, plains, forests, rivers, lakes and oceans, but a way of thinking and understanding. Each artist in An Entangled Existence draws on a deep understanding of these landscapes infused with ancient First Nations traditions and culture and shaped by colonisation. They are deeply connected with the regional communities they live within—the rich socio-ecological fabric of those places, and the complex and nuanced issues that are so often fertile ground for creatives.
The parent project behind the exhibition is Regional Futures: Artists in a Volatile Landscape. It began in 2022 as an initiative of the Regional Arts Network of New South Wales, funded by Create NSW, with a brief to place artists at the centre of a dialogue examining a future vision for the place where they live and create. This was done via self-directed, creative development residencies, culminating in an exhibition and symposium at Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre in Western Sydney in 2023.
The artists commissioned for the Regional Futures project live and work alongside neighbours, friends and businesses at different stages of considering what the future will look like. Creative Producer of the 2022-23 Regional Futures project, Narelle Vogel says this gives these creative practitioners a unique opportunity to use their artform to pose more questions, reveal hard truths, and perhaps suggest solutions:
“Their art becomes a safe space for challenging conversations. And as many of us feel a sense of urgency, these artists are being proactive, showing that now is the time to work together towards a more positive future.”
Of the 27 artists involved in the original Regional Futures project, seven have come together for An Entangled Existence. They are Anna Glynn (Jaspers Brush), Laura Baker (Blayney), Tracy Luff (Goulburn), Jane Richens (Dungog), Joanne Stead (Tamworth), Tania Hartigan (Wallabadah), and Kim V. Goldsmith (Dubbo).
An Entangled Existence is a selection of the works developed during the original project, and since then, that continue the conversations started in 2022-23. They’re designed to not only question our ideas and values but inspire hopeful actions. Suggestions about the way forward are often revealed in the artworks, like Anna Glynn’s richly coloured video projection work, DWELLING. It speaks of what home is for us as a community, for the environment and the creatures we share these spaces with.
Anna Glynn, DWELLING, 2023, video still from moving image projection (image supplied by artist)
Based in the Shoalhaven, multi-disciplinary artist Glynn says the character of the regions is constantly changing and being reshaped to reflect new populations and expectations:
“Small country towns become bustling tourist hotspots inundated with visitors. Perceptions of our regions are shaped by economics. Pressure on the environment increases. The global phenomenon of over-tourism is becoming apparent, and we all participate in this in our own ways.
“Is there a happy medium that embraces all of the wants of humans living within an ancient landscape? What does a successful regional location look like?”
Glynn believes creative thinking and expression have a unique ability to highlight and direct consideration towards the bigger questions of regional life:
“There may also be opportunities for regional artists to profit or prophet in the changing nature of the regions. Our creative practices may draw on and mirror our regional environment giving us the potential to have a positive impact on regional futures.
“Finding ways for these messages to gain traction will be crucial for creatives and their communities.”
Laura Baker, Places We Call Home, 2023, hand cut paper, acrylic blocks, 10 x 2 x 15cm (image supplied by artist)
Laura Baker’s finely crafted hand-cut paper houses and acrylic block installation, Places We Call Home also examines the impact of the built environment on individual and collective experiences of community. Hers is on the Central Tablelands of the state. She centres the emotionally loaded word ‘home’ against a backdrop of housing availability and the affordability crises:
“Over the past few years regional areas have seen an influx of new residents ‘escaping’ metropolitan centres. Demand for housing and our streetscapes are changing with new developments, contemporary houses and shiny facilities. Town planners and a miscellany of builders will influence the aesthetic of the regional future, but it is the spirit of the people that must be preserved through this period of growth.”
Tracy Luff, Marionette, 2023, cardboard, 140 x 66 x 50cm (image supplied by artist)
Behind the closed doors of home, Tracy Luff has used her delicately hand-crafted cardboard sculptures to progress the conversation about Domestic Family Violence (DFV) in regional communities—for some, a place of no escape. Goulburn-based Luff’s Marionette and Pillows on the Wall tap into the notion of home not being a safe place, particularly during times of great stress:
“My work plays an integral role in breaking the silence, fostering open discussions, and challenging the stigma surrounding DFV.
“Building strong networks among women and community leaders is essential to creating support systems and sharing resources. Education, especially for the younger generation, is vital to recognising early signs of abuse and promoting healthy relationships.
“Advocating for improved access to services in rural areas, including counselling and legal support, is critical. By empowering women to speak out and support each other, we can ensure our regions move beyond awareness to actively eradicate DFV, fostering safety and equality for all.”
Entangled existence – weaving the domestic and the global
The works in An Entangled Existence move fluidly between domestic perspectives to regional and global views, asking audiences to acknowledge we are all part of complex, connected systems, where disruptions, good or bad, have a ripple effect.
The heroes of the Upper Hunter captured on video in Jane Richens’ Performative Portraits—Change Makers for a Low Carbon Future are those in the community taking individual actions towards a more sustainable future. Some actions are rhythmic and upbeat, others slow, meditative and ponderous. These people are changemakers in their communities, like stones dropped in a pond—each creating a ripple effect.
Jane Richens, Aunty Sharon, 2023, video still from video series (image supplied by artist)
Richens sees the arts as a powerful mechanism to rethink and reimagine stories from regional locations using unexpected mediums:
“Watch, listen, learn, research, consider, rethink, reflect or retell stories, create new stories. This approach or stream of actions is relevant to any location or environment. It is the care and concern we give to reinventing in response to understanding where we are. That understanding is for me never a ‘one-story-tells-all’. Rather, it is the effort of engaging, experiencing and translating that is a worthwhile, creative and at times playful endeavour.
“My practice embraces creating community engagement activities to learn, question, understand and present environmental issues such as biodiversity loss, ecosystem awareness, as well as ideas around sustainability.”
While change is a constant in our lives, it is not always easy. Joanne Stead had conversations with local communities around her home base of Tamworth before creating works that reflect ideas of our unacknowledged vulnerability and fragility as humans:
“A future that returns to a level of sustainability or regenerative possibilities is necessarily going to involve sacrifice, not the least of which might be the accumulation of things that is so rampant as part of a capitalist, consumerist society.
“We will not be able to continue in the manner to which we have become accustomed. In moving to a new mind frame, people’s perspectives will be uncomfortable.”
Joanne Stead, Embodiment III, 2023, Eucalyptus leaf mache, jacaranda sticks, jasmine vine, paper twine, newsend, flour paste, jeweller’s wire, 88 x 48 x 49cm (image supplied by artist)
Stead’s sculptural Embodiment series, representative of women’s forms, reimagines our place within the ecosystem, emphasising we are not separate or superior to it but an integral part. Each artwork underscores the need to adopt sustainable practices and live in harmony with Earth’s rhythms.
Tania Hartigan, Step Lightly, handmade paper, 2023, 200 x 60 x 5cm (image supplied by artist)
During the creative development stage of the Regional Futures project, Stead worked alongside Wallabadah-based Gamilaraay Yinaar artist Tania Hartigan to create works looking at what sustainability might mean. In talking about the processes behind her handmade paper work, Step Lightly, Hartigan says using environmentally friendly materials and studio practices are central to her living and working sustainably:
“I hear the words of Elders sing through my journey, ‘Take only what we need’. These words are important for all of us to ponder in our lives as members of a consumer-based world.”
Kim V. Goldsmith, Vaticinor Stories, 2023, audio story montage in custom upholstered vintage suitcase, duration 39 minutes (image supplied by artist)
Working across the Western Plains and the Mid North Coast of New South Wales during her residency for Regional Futures, Kim V. Goldsmith’s gathered field recordings of more-than-human voices—bats, birds, fish and earthworms, and first-person audio stories, developing a body of work titled Vaticinor (The Augur). Goldsmith seeks to imagine what a world fuelled by zero-carbon renewables might sound like—where the opportunities lie, and how new ways of thinking, knowing and understanding might achieve a more entangled and abundant future for humans and more-than-humans:
“If we listen to each other and the natural world more attentively and deeply, we’ll not only start to understand how connected we are, but that the future we want relies heavily on these connections and the need for more diversity.
“It’s critical we include more voices in these discussions about the challenges facing us. It’s a privilege to even be able to have these conversations, but we need to acknowledge that our behaviours, values and viewpoints often exclude some from participating.”
The intersectional feminist lens applied to the works assembled for this iteration of Regional Futures highlights the paradoxes of some of the issues facing regional communities. Each artist’s intimate relationship with their home territories offers advantages and disadvantages, as entanglement often does. However, Narelle Vogel sees each one as an active connector and conversationalist, amplifying the voices of their respective communities”
“They know how to engage through their art, exploring topics that in many other settings are seen as taboo, too difficult, too political.
“Many say that solutions will only be found through creative thinking, through challenging the norms and finding new paths.Artists are well placed to lead this process, using their creativity to bring together disparate thoughts, offering their work as another entry point into this collective conversation.”
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Creative conversations – listening to unheard voices
Kim adds for ClimateCultures: In the eighteen months since I wrote a post for ClimateCultures about my work as a commissioned Regional Futures project artist, looking at the impact fast-tracked renewable energy developments were having on regional communities of inland New South Wales (NSW), conversations about our future remain caught up in the ‘climate wars’. There’s been little change in the position of those in power on the direction of a renewable energy-driven future1, with a commitment (if not enough action) to achieve net zero by 20502. We’re far from reaching that target3 and renewables won’t be enough to get us there.
Behind the resistance to wind and solar developments in some communities are conservative politicians calling for the lights to be kept on by extending the life of coal-fired power stations and developing more gas fields, while they fiddle the figures on unviable nuclear options4 in time for next year’s Federal Government election. All this energy infrastructure is in rural and regional Australia.
Kim V. Goldsmith, Humi Haptic Hands, 2023, haptic sculpture developed with Brian McNamara and soundscape composition, duration 15 minutes, (images supplied by artist)
In my May 2023 post, I wrote of the need to listen to unheard voices in our consideration of the future. My work as a storyteller and sound artist exploring social and environmental ecologies has continued to seek ways to amplify the unheard—human and more-than-human, listening attentively and asking questions about what we need to do to ensure not just a sustainable future, but a more connected and biodiverse one. This is now playing out in a new self-directed residency project called SOIL+AiR creative future landscapes5, focusing on a farm where things are already being done and thought about very differently, despite being in the midst of a conventional broadacre cropping area.
During the recent local government elections in my home region, in the Central West Orana Renewable Energy Zone (REZ), a NSW political party called the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers6 surprised many by securing enough votes to put two candidates on council. The party are very conservative and anti-renewables. This is significant in light of local governments in NSW pushing for a greater role in renewable energy development planning7.
As the climate becomes increasingly unstable, there’s a growing sense of marginalisation and disconnection within less populated rural communities—a case of too much change coming too quickly, and a lack of trust in our political leadership. Australian not-for-profit climate communications organisation, the Climate Council reports a clear rural-urban divide when it comes to the impact of extreme weather events. It’s also clear that thoughts on how we reduce the carbon load on our environment are also divisive8. The impact in question isn’t just extreme weather events. Large-scale renewables bring with them changing land use and aesthetics, environmental impacts from clearing, and the shock of a workforce suddenly arriving in a community already short of housing, health services and public amenities. It’s also cultural change. Governments and the multinational developers are now keen to smooth things over by injecting tens of millions of dollars into the REZ communities for projects and infrastructure.
For me, the Regional Futures project and the work that has evolved from it, such as the Entangled Existence exhibition, has been an opportunity to take more personal action by initiating rarely had conversations about what it means to be a good ancestor9—looking ahead 30, 50,100 years. Significant investment in adaptations for surviving a more hostile climate, driven by political will and systemic change, along with new technologies, will be critical to securing our future. But as individuals within the communities bearing the brunt of change, we can’t afford to wait any longer. We are running out of time. We must step up, making a considered effort to better connect with each other and the more-than-human world, attentively listening, respectfully sharing our stories, and thinking deeply about what actions we can implement collectively, big and small, that will create a meaningful legacy for those who don’t have agency—our descendants. In the recently published book, Living Hot: Surviving and Thriving on a Heating Planet10, Clive Hamilton and George Wilkenfield note “we have the opportunity to make a nation in which the next generations can survive and thrive on a different kind of Earth.”
Providing the creative framework for these conversations is something I can do, encouraging others to walk and talk with me. The Regional Futures: An Entangled Existence group exhibition at Moruya is an opportunity to take the conversation to another community. The South Coast of NSW is dealing with its own complex and nuanced issues in the face of rapid change. As artists, we can have these important conversations during the exhibition, setting the scene for a more abundant, entangled and diverse future, one conversation at a time.
Find more
The artists in the exhibition, Regional Futures: An Entangled Existence, are:
Update 25/11/24: Following the successful run of the Regional Futures exhibition and events (see 31/10/24 update), Kim has written on her blog about the experience of being an artist, the artist’s role today, the power of collaboration, and recent work on evaluating how art and creative practice stimulate societal transformations – along with insights from the collaboration with her fellow artists in this project. You can also watch the second, online panel discussion from the exhibition in her blog post.
Update 31/10/24: Kim has posted some photos from the exhibition opening on her Facebook page, and has shared this recording of the opening day’s panel discussion:
A pdf of the artists’ essay Regional Futures: An Entangled Existence is available here at Kim’s ecoPULSE.art website; we’re pleased to have published it on ClimateCultures first, along with Kim’s personal reflections.
An artist exploring layers of nuance, complexity and hidden elements to present rural, regional and remote landscapes and communities in ways that make the familiar, unfamiliar.
Artist Michael Gresalfi shares new artworks using leaves, seeds and other natural materials to produce zoomorphic or anthropomorphic masks and sculptures that echo our early ancestors and an approach to the world that recognises, “We are all related.”
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