Primary Succession, a major new immersive exhibition in Dandenong, Victoria, by artists Wona Bae (South Korea) and Charlie Lawler (Australia), explores how life reorganises itself after ecological
rupture.
Opening earlier this month and running until 15 August, the work reflects on impermanence, memory and adaptation.
ArtsHub spoke with Bae and Lawler about their exhibition and its aims.
‘Primary Succession investigates a speculative future ecology emerging after rupture,’ Bae says. ‘It borrows its title from the ecological process through which life slowly begins again after disturbance, such as after a lava flow, glacial retreat, or in this case the climate crisis.
‘It is a speculative climate future, where the world is learning how to assemble itself again. Drawing on the process through which life re-emerges in altered conditions, it explores adaptation, regeneration and the persistence of life beyond human-centred systems.’
The exhibition unfolds across two gallery spaces, with a satellite public artwork, Field of Future Ecologies – an installation within a glass cube shut off from human intervention that gradually evolves across the duration of the exhibition – located in Harmony Square.
Lawler describes Field of Future Ecologies as ‘an immersive ecology; a nocturnal, hyper-saline landscape of reflective pools, crystalline organisms, sculptural moving forms, sound and light.
‘The environment shifts slowly from day to night through timed intervals, allowing the audience to experience the landscape first in the detail of daylight, and then as it gradually wakes through dusk into the iridescence of night.
‘There is an interesting contradiction within the work. It is highly visible and accessible to the public 24 hours a day, yet at the same time it remains unreachable. It is a world humans can observe, but not enter or control.’
Primary Succession: field station
The exhibition’s other gallery operates as a kind of field station, preparing audiences to enter the logic of this world through field guide material, glossary terms, species studies, climate notes and environmental instructions.
‘We were interested in creating a world that feels unfamiliar, but not entirely separate from our own,’ Bae says. ‘It is not intended as a didactic climate message. Rather, we wanted to create an emotional and sensory encounter with a landscape in transition. It is a place where collapse and regeneration are happening at the same time. There is a grief in that, but also curiosity, beauty and adaptation.
‘What emerged from our research was not a direct representation of the local landscape, but a speculative future version of it.’
And what about the relationship between their work and the wider world it represents?
‘We do not see art as standing outside ecology,’ Lawler says. ‘Art is made from materials, labour, energy, histories, places and relationships. It is always already part of ecological systems, even when it does not explicitly address them.’
‘Scientific research is essential, but art can work through sensation, emotion, atmosphere and ambiguity. It can hold complexity without reducing it to a single message. It can allow people to feel their way into questions that might otherwise seem too large, abstract or overwhelming.’
