‘What role can art play in the natural world?’: Australia’s newest gallery showcases changing landscapes
When West Australian artist Jacobus Capone set out to document a performance on France’s Bossons Glacier, he immersed himself – literally – in a disappearing world.
When West Australian artist Jacobus Capone set out to document a performance on France’s Bossons Glacier, he immersed himself – literally – in a disappearing world.
Submerged in meltwater, he moved across and under the icefall, pressing his skin to ice that was breaking away from the glacier’s edge. This was no ordinary performance; it was an intimate, physical reckoning with a changing landscape.
Capone’s work is now journeying from the Bossons Glacier, high in the Mont Blanc massif, to Victoria’s Grampians National Park. Still recovering from bushfires that tore through more than 76,000ha last summer, the mountain region is the site of a new cultural venture.
Opening on July 5, End & Being is the inaugural exhibition at the National Centre for Environmental Art, a new initiative by the WAMA (Wildlife Art Museum of Australia) Foundation.
Set on the edge of the Grampians, the centre pairs Capone’s glacier performance with a region grappling with environmental consequences, bringing two damaged ecologies into sharp, provocative conversation.
Capone maintains a practice spanning performance, photography, video installation, painting and site-specific works. Among large-scale video projections of melting ice, viewers are drawn directly into Capone’s performance, as he documents himself moving through the glacier across 89 days.
For exhibition curator Jose Da Silva it’s this physicality that hits hardest.
“It’s one thing to talk about the environment,” he says. “It’s another thing to see somebody put their own body almost in danger with that environment that is transforming.”
The gallery is part of a unique new art and environmental precinct by the WAMA Foundation and is Australia’s first gallery dedicated exclusively to showcasing and reflecting on artistic narratives concerning the natural world. It confronts viewers with the question: what role can art play in the natural world?
It is a question Da Silva says is vital to confront. For him, the contrast between glaciers in the exhibition and the fire-scarred lands of the Grampians explores the emotional and spiritual dimensions of loss.
“Often the issue (of climate change) is taken up by politics and reduced to science,” he says. “But there’s something beyond that. It’s all of those instinctive human impulses and feelings that we have when we see, say in the case of the Grampians, a burnt landscape.”
For WAMA Foundation chief executive Pippa Mott, these issues feel especially urgent and close to home. In December 2024, she and her partner had to evacuate their home in Halls Gap as fire spread rapidly through the ranges.
“As my partner and I evacuated, we were watching what looked like a mushroom cloud form in a matter of minutes over the ranges,” she says. “It was quite beautiful, actually, but it was terrifying.
“And we were driving, we were zooming along the highway covering quite a bit of ground, and it just wasn’t getting smaller. That’s when we realised just how big it was.”
The fires tore through vast tracts of bushland and threatened homes. Months later, green shoots have begun to reappear but, for many, the memory of how quickly things changed lingers.
It’s why, for Mott, environmental art has a critical role to play.
“Environmental art is an important vehicle to instil a sense of connection with the natural world,” she says.
“Sometimes, this may be more provocative and stir difficult conversations. At other times, works will simply demonstrate the beauty, complexity and sheer marvel of the natural world.
“The two approaches in tandem are equally important.”
Known colloquially as the Garden of Victoria for its botanical richness and traditionally as Gariwerd, Grampians National Park is home to a third of Victoria’s flora and holds the largest number of rock art sites in southern Australia, underscoring its ecological and deep Indigenous cultural significance.
“Within Victoria, the park is beloved across political lines. People want to see it protected and celebrated,” Mott says. “We hope very much, particularly in the aftermath of devastating fires, that we can play a part in raising the Grampians’ profile on a national level.”
The gallery’s launch marks the first phase of a larger vision for the precinct, which includes the new Gariwerd/Grampians Endemic Garden and outdoor artworks, with a second phase set to introduce a sculpture trail, nature play areas and accessible boardwalks.
Mott is excited about what lies ahead for the precinct.
“I’m excited about hosting artists and facilitating the production of site-responsive work,” she says.
When asked what he hopes audiences take away from this exhibition and the space, Da Silva says: “I hope this will encourage audiences to slow down and think about our very entangled relationship with fragile systems.”
The National Centre for Environmental Art opens on July 5 in Halls Gap, Victoria.
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