Latest news with #environmentalArt
ABC News
08-07-2025
- General
- ABC News
Pomonal home to a new environmental art gallery.
In an Australian first, the western Victorian town of Pomonal is home to a new environmental art gallery.
ABC News
05-07-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
New Wildlife Art Museum of Australia opens next door to Grampians National Park
Nestled in the foothills of Victoria's towering Grampians mountain range, also known as Gariwerd, is a new, world-class art centre. The new Wildlife Art Museum of Australia (WAMA) at Pomonal in western Victoria is a celebration of environmental art. The venue is an Australian first, combining an environmental art gallery with a native Australian garden. Chief executive Pippa Mott said the 16-hectare project was 14 years in the making. "[WAMA is] a gallery and garden precinct that exists in proximity to beautiful Gariwerd Grampians National Park, which is a place of such amazing geological, cultural, and ecological significance," Ms Mott said. The gallery opening on July 5 featured an exhibition called End & Being by Jacobus Capone, exploring the concept of climate change through pre-recorded performance art created on the glaciers of Mont Blanc in France. Ms Mott said the installation was the newest addition to the environmental art movement. "[Environmental art is] a really broad genre and it's not a new thing," Ms Mott said. "It's been really accelerating since the 1960s. Artists have forever responded to the environment and the natural world. "But I suppose in the past few decades, they're responding with a little bit more agency, are often informed more by science, and often speaking directly to some of the issues facing the natural world." Botanical gardens on the site contain 500 native Australian plants including 20 of the 40 plants endemic to the Grampians. WAMA director Jill Burness said the plants were protected by a feral-proof fence. She said the plants could be used as a seed bank to revegetate the Grampians after bushfire, and, if the site itself were affected by fire, seeds could be brought in to regenerate it. "[The protected endemic plants are] not only here, they're at Halls Gap and they're certainly protected at the Cranbourne botanical gardens," Ms Burness said. "If a bushfire came through here … we could duplicate these plants again from Cranbourne." The art gallery is a privately funded venture. Ms Mott said the board was still fundraising to support future developments. "[This is] stage one of the centre and the endemic garden is just the beginning," Ms Mott said. "We rely on giving or philanthropy alongside grants and sponsorships." Tickets to the venue are free for children, and $12–18 for adults. "Obviously, we are a ticketed destination," Ms Mott said. "We have a retail space, we have a cafe, but we are essentially a not-for-profit at the end of the day, and so we hope that what we're doing inspires people."
The Guardian
23-05-2025
- General
- The Guardian
Cecile Elstein obituary
My mother, Cecile Elstein, who has died aged 87, had a passion for natural objects and making things with found materials. She was a sculptor, printmaker and environmental artist, whose work was about experience and the response to relationships and environments through feeling, thought and action. 'Creativity works to adapt, repair and celebrate,' she said. 'Material methods of artistic production begin with observation, investigation, research and design.' Born in Cape Town, South Africa, Cecile was the elder child of Michael Hoberman, who ran a thriving coal-delivery business, and his wife, Ruth (nee Rappaport). Her younger brother, Gerald, became a photographer and publisher. Cecile went to Cape of Good Hope seminary, a girls' school in Cape Town, and studied sculpture with Lippy Lipshitz at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, and then in the studio of Nell Kaye in the late 1950s. Cecile was working as a lab assistant in Groote Schuur hospital when she met Max Elstein, a doctor, whom she married in 1957, aged 19. To escape apartheid they moved in 1961 to the UK, at first to London, where in 1965 Cecile became a pupil of the surrealist artist Catherine Yarrow. In 1970, the family moved to Southampton, where Cecile set up a life-drawing group. She studied sculpture and printmaking at West Surrey College of Art and Design in Farnham (now part of UCA, the University for the Creative Arts). In 1977, we moved to Manchester when Max took up the chair of obstetrics, gynaecology and human reproductive health at the university. Cecile set up her studio-workshop there, teaching 'awareness through art'. In 2001, she set up Didsbury Drawing, a life-drawing group based on a philosophy of non-interference. Cecile was influenced by the work of the philosopher Martin Buber and Albert Camus's The Myth of Sisyphus. She pursued accessible environments, empathy in design, and developed experimental methodologies. Between 1980 and 2019 she worked with Kip Gresham, a pioneering printmaker, at his Manchester and Cambridge workshops. In 1983, Cecile was granted a North-West Bursary award for Mandarah, a pneumatic artwork; it toured to Singapore international arts festival, representing Britain. In 1986, she was a prize winner at the Ninth British International Print Biennale, Bradford; her public artworks include a site-specific sculpture, Tangents (1997), at the Wimpole Estate, Cambridgeshire. Cecile also made commissioned portraiture, large abstract screen prints and 'art in environment' works, which are held and exhibited in public and private collections, including the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, Manchester Cathedral, Manchester Academy of Fine Art, Salford University Gallery, and the Royal Northern College of Music. Cecile was an influential presence in Manchester's artistic and cultural life. Cecile and Max cared for my brother, Paul, who had multiple sclerosis, from the 1980s until his death in 1998. Cecile is survived by Max, me, six grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren.
