Art and Environmental Sustainability

A School of Art Research Cluster

NASA

Bob Brown HEAT lecture

Simon Perry,Locust: Unlimited Edition, 2006, mixed media installation

Dominic Redfern, Wire (still), 2010

Lesley Duxbury,By Degree

Philip Samartzis, Antartica, photograph, 2010

photograph Linda Williams, Mark Willson Cultures of Sustainability Paper

Lesley Duxbury,Untitled

Dr. Ruth Johnstone, Curatorial Lecture

Jazmina Cininas, 2010

This trans-disciplinary research group focuses on how cultural interpretations of the non-human world contribute to our knowledge of the environment and the crisis in global ecological sustainability. Research is undertaken in both a wide range of art practices and the rapidly developing international theoretical fields of the Ecological Humanities and Human –Animal Studies.

We focus on such key areas as: human-animal relations; climate change and species loss; the city and globalization; the body and the material foundations of subjectivity; and the imagery and poetics of nature. The study of the social relations between cultural practices and science and technology, along with critiques of consumption are also fields aligned with this research cluster.

Art and Environmental Sustainability is affiliated with major projects in two RMIT Research Institutes: Globalization and Culture in the Global Cities Research Institute, and Intervention through Art in the Design Research Institute.

Key people

Assoc. Prof. Linda Williams, Research Cluster leader

John Billan
Jazmina Cininas
Prof. Lesley Duxbury
Dr. Phil Edwards
Assoc. Prof. Peter Ellis
Joy Hirst
Shane Hulbert
Dr. Ruth Johnstone
Rebecca Mayo
Simon Perry
Dominic Redfern
Cameron Robbins
Dr Philip Samartzis
Dr Kristen Sharp
Fleur Summers
Louise Weaver

Prof. Steve Baker, University of Central Lancashire, UK
Dr Rod Bennison, Minding Animals International Committee, Australia
Dr Geoff Berry, Monash University, Victoria, Australia
Philip Courtenay, Chelsea College Art & Design, London, UK
Dr Carol Freeman, University of Tasmania, Australia
Assoc. Prof. Cathy Greenfield, Media & Communication, RMIT, Australia
Dr Larissa Hjorth, School of Media & Communications, RMIT, Australia
Miyuki Jokiranta, The Seven Thousand Oaks Project, Australia
Dr Kumi Kato, Wakayama University, Japan
Professor Freya Mathews, La Trobe University
Ross McLean, CORE-Creative Research for the Environment, Edinburgh, Scotland
Ling Min, Shanghai University, Fine Arts College, China
Jodi Newcombe, Director, Carbon Arts
Assoc. Prof. Kate Rigby, Monash University, Victoria, Australia
Professor Deborah Bird Rose, Macquarie University, Australia
Angela Singer, Artist, New Zealand
Bryndis Snaebjorndottir, Artist, Iceland and UK
Assoc. Prof. Deb Verhoeven, Media & Communciation, RMIT, Australia
Dr Wendy Wheeler, Reader, London Metropolitan University, UK
Mark Wilson, Artist, UK

Postgraduate

Jazmina Cininas.

Catherine Clover.

Sam Leach Ph D Candidate (APA Scholarship) Topic TBC Senior Supervisor Assoc. Prof. Linda Williams, Second Supervisor Prof. Lesley Duxbury.

Barbara Mau MA Candidate.'Reinterpreting Glover's Garden' (Completion 2012). Senior Supervisor, Dr Ruth Johnstone; Supervisor, Jazmina Cininas.

Harry Nankin PhD Candidate. "Gathering Shadows:landscape photography and the ecological gaze" (Completion 2016). Senior Supervisor, Assoc Prof. Linda Williams; Second Supervisor, Prof. Lesley Duxbury.

Jen Rae PhD Candidate (RMIT International Scholarship). "Transforming Ecologies: Sustainability through Public Art and Intervention" (Completion 2013) Senior Supervisor, Assoc Prof. Linda Williams, Second Supervisor Simon Perry.

Julia Silvester MA Candidate (APA Scholarship). From Another Perspective: re-imagining historical spaces (Completion 2011). Senior Supervisor, Prof. Lesley Duxbury; Second Supervisor, Simon Perry

Yi Fang Lu DFA Candidate The domesticated animal: Reconfiguring Human-Animal relations in the domestic environment

Key Projects (actual)

	ARC Linkage Project: Spatial Dialogues: Public Art and Climate Change Spatial Dialogues looks at the social and environmental benefits of combining highly innovative public art projects with electronic social network systems.
	Antarctica: Human Intervention at the Edge of the World Antarctica: Human Intervention at the Edge of the World is an examination of the impact extreme environmental conditions have on people, and the way in which they adapt to those conditions in order to survive.
	Cultures of Sustainability Cultures of Sustainability is a transdisciplinary symposium organised by the Art and Sustainability Research Cluster and developed in association with a major international art exhibition at RMIT Gallery, Heat: Art and climate change and in partnership with ASLE-ANZ (Association for the Study of Literature and Environment – Australia New Zealand),
	Double Life: artist-researchers and issues of environmental sustainability Each of the artists in this project has strong links to a particular region of rural Victoria and draws upon her/his phenomenological experiences of their respective area to address real-life environmental issues such as drought, bushfires, floods and land/water degradation through their research practices. The aim of this project is to use creative approaches to reveal these issues, which affect environmental sustainability and to explore ways that artist-researchers can design innovative research methods to produce new knowledge contributions within the academic community.
	Eco-critique and Historiography This project examines problems in social theory and philosophy to address questions of the relations between natural history and contemporary culture.
	Expedition Expedition investigates the significance of our ongoing relationship with the land and the identity of our nation.
	Multiple Modernities and The City This project focuses on the potential of contemporary art as a compelling means of interpreting late-modernity, architecture and the city.
	Mythos Mythos is a large-scale video installation bringing together landscape studies and performance works from environments across Europe and Australia.
	Peninsula Peninsula is a six-channel surround sound installation comprising sounds recorded in the Dampier Peninsula in the Kimberley over a one-month period between August and September 2010.
	Screen 37 This multi-media screen project utilises the plasma screen located at street level in building 37, Swanston Street (next to Druids café). Artists from the RMIT community have been invited to submit video works responding to the theme of globalization, global cities and/or sustainability. Screen 37 is a transdisplinary project managed by the Art and Environmental Sustainability Research Cluster in association with the Sculpture program in the School of Art and the Global Cities Research Institute.
	Seven Thousand Oaks Seven Thousand Oaks is a long-term project addressing the issue of environmental sustainability in the arts.
	Syzygy The heavens mirrored in the shallow waters of Lake Tyrrell in the Victorian Mallee once informed a sacred reciprocity of sky with country, reciprocity long since ruptured. Syzygy reflects upon this story and the wider contemporary environmental predicament by creating photographs on the lakebed by starlight without a camera.
	Wire WIRE is a work that brings together the environments of Fromelles in French Flanders and the Mallee region of Australia, centring on their shared history through the events of July 1916 and their aftermath.

Archived Research Projects

Affiliated refereed publications

Pan: Philosophy, Activism, Nature

Links

Animals & Society, University of Western Australia, Australia
The Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLEANZ)
Chelsea College of Art & Design, London, UK

Contact

Associate Professor Linda Williams
RMIT University, School of Art
124 Latrobe Street, Melbourne
VIC. 3000 Australia
Tel& Fax: +61 3 9925 2369
Email: linda.williams@rmit.edu.au