Season One: Terrestrial A land for the living

Season One: Terrestrial

A world of wonder, magic, and leaps of imagination may be just what it takes to understand the past and reimagine the future. Artists of Season One: Terrestrial explore the terrestrial plane of our planet through the lenses of history, consumer culture, science fiction and fabulism, taking us on a larger-than-life journey through familiar and unfamiliar landscapes. Time fades as we are silenced for a moment to ponder, what do we know about our natural world and how is it that we came to know it?

What might at first seem like wild conceits, artists in this season, across multiple exhibitions present the land back to us reimagined.

The lines between history and fiction become less clear as artists explore and expose truths about our impact, our assumptions and how we will need to engage with the beauty and magic of the terrestrial if we are to preserve it. Through the slipping states, and ethereal grace of land bound places, reimagined, enlivened as if speaking to us through the magic of art, those practitioners – as conduits- probe and point to ultimately interconnected states of existence on Earth.

The exhibition is part of the 2024-25 Seasons program, seeking to connect the artists and regional experiences so often on the frontlines of climate, economic, and political change, showing us the inherent interdependence of our physical ecosystems and that we in turn are not only interconnected but that our future is inescapably and powerfully collective.

A land for the living

In A land for the living, travel to alienesque soy laboratories offered by Lismore based Betty Russ where conscious and clairvoyant plants tell us where we are headed; passing through Soil Fields of Victoria Pham to listen to worlds unheard, drawing inspiration from scientific research regarding drought management, and environmental and geological surveys of Bathurst, blending projection, sound, and bio-installation to offer an immersive, fantasy landscape. 

Glimpse dystopic capitalist realities presented by Indigenous media group Karrabing Collective, while we mourn the melt of glacial ice and observe the release of their ancient memories in an installation by Janet Laurence including work made during her AAD Fellowship at Casey Station, Antarctica and via Pratchaya Phinthong, travel across seas to Laos, the most bombed country on the planet, to feel the scars that remain in the forests which protect against future violence.

KADIST is a Seasons Series program partner, providing the loan of video works from its extensive and internationally renowned collection for a dedicated screening space complementing the Seasons Series program. The screening program will preference and promote the visibility and agency of diverse regional and rural artists, situating them in a global conversation, connecting and platforming these important voices.

Artists // Janet Laurence, Betty Russ, Victoria Pham, Karrabing Collective

KADIST Screening Space // Pratchaya Phinthong

Image: Exhibition view, Betty Russ, A Leakage of Wholes, 2023, found organic objects, PVC, tubing, reusable cable ties, steel, soy-silk, chlorophyll, H2O, sound. Firstdraft, Eora. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Jessica Maurer.