'Earth Ethics' Sydney Book Launch

This launch is presented in conjunction with All That Is Alive, UTS Gallery's current exhibition exploring artists working with living systems, including Earth Ethics contributing authors Keg de Souza and Madeleine Collie.

Speakers

• Professor Brian Martin, artist and director, Wominjeka Djeembana Indigenous Research Lab, Monash University
• Keg de Souza, artist, contributing author
• Melissa Ratliff, Earth Ethics co-editor

Refreshments will be provided. RSVPs essential.

Earth Ethics: Art, Institutions and Regenerative Practices will be available for purchase at UTS Gallery for $35, limited copies available.

About the book

Earth Ethics: Art, Institutions and Regenerative Practices is the second in a series of readers published by Monash University Museum of Art | MUMA, edited by Madeleine Collie, Megan Cope, Charlotte Day and Melissa Ratliff. It features essays, interviews, case studies and exercises from a wide range of artists, initiatives and institutions who are rethinking the relationships that museums/galleries, artists, audiences and communities have with their locations. What are our responsibilities to the places we inhabit? How can creative and cultural practices nurture reciprocity with our more-than-human worlds?

About the speakers

Keg de Souza

Keg de Souza is an artist of Goan ancestry who lives on unceded Gadigal land. Architecturally trained, she creates social and spatial environments, making reference to her lived experiences of squatting and organising with projects that use plant and food politics, temporary architecture, publishing and radical pedagogy. De Souza also draws from personal experiences of colonialism to inform her layered projects that centre voices that are often marginalised, for learning about Place. Themes of displacement – through lenses such as colonialism and gentrification – filter through her work, sharing (often lesser-known) stories of plants, people and Place.

Brian Martin 

Professor Brian Martin is the director of Wominjeka Djeembana Indigenous Research Lab. Brian is a descendant of Bundjalung, Muruwari and Kamilaroi peoples. He has been a practicing artist for thirty years and has exhibited both nationally and internationally specifically in the media of painting and drawing. His research and practice focus on refiguring creative practice and culture from an Indigenous ideological perspective based on a reciprocal relationship to “Country”. Brian was the inaugural Associate Dean Indigenous at Monash University Art, Design and Architecture and previously Professor and Head of Research at the Institute of Koorie Education at Deakin University. Brian is represented by William Mora Galleries.

Melissa Ratliff

Melissa Ratliff is an editor at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, and was previously a curator at Monash University Museum of Art | MUMA. She has held curatorial and public programming positions in contemporary art organisations in Australia and overseas, including the Biennale of Sydney and documenta. At MUMA, she co-edited the exhibition publications Renee So: Provenance (2023), Tree Story (2021) and Language Is a River (2021), and worked with artists Shelley Lasica and Vivienne Binns on significant monographs. Her writing has been recently published in un Magazine, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art and by West Space.

Banner image: Earth Ethics cover. Design: Stuart Geddes and Žiga Testen; Background: Jen Berean, Callum Morton, Linda Tegg
(Monash Art Projects), The Birds 2024. Installation view: Ian Potter Sculpture Court, Monash University Museum of Art, Naarm/Melbourne, 2024. Photo: The artists.