The Environment : Ackroyd & Harvey

Artist-activists Ackroyd & Harvey – Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey – have worked together for over three decades, delivering poignant and powerful artworks, installations and performances across the globe.

Olafur Eliasson created an artificial mist-shrouded sun in the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern for The Weather Project, installed a cascading waterfall in the gardens of Versailles and employed circles of melting icebergs in Ice Watch to focus attention on climate change. Together with his collaborators at Studio Olafur Eliasson, he has worked between museum and public spaces. His most recent project combines both.

There has never been anything moderate in the practice of legendary Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama. Driven by childhood trauma, obsessive creative explorations and ambition, at the heart of Yayoi Kusama’s work is the natural world and the cosmic force that fuels all life. This central tenet of her practice is explored – in art and nature – for the first time at New York Botanical Garden.

Betty Muffler is an artist and healer – her paintings, drawing and weavings are imbued with her connection to Country.

Spanning over forty years of rigorous practice, the intuitive and highly personal work of Pauline Rhodes has encompassed many concerns that are now at the forefront of contemporary art: sustainability, conservation, the integration of natural systems and human impact on the environment. In several recent exhibitions, the now octogenarian artist continued her intense rumination on what constitutes an ethical relationship with the natural world.

Flow forms

Taloi Havini’s expansive artworks draw on archival, scientific and cultural research, underpinned by a deeply- held commitment to First Nations knowledge systems, particularly those from her home in the Autonomous Region of Bougainville. Her latest project with Ocean Space in Venice is set to draw together the threads of Havini’s practice in an ambitious and exciting new installation.

Dale Harding’s multilayered works draw upon connections between modernism and Aboriginal culture to propose a new model of practice.

Nici Cumpston, a Barkindji woman, is both a respected First Nation’s artist and a leading curator. She currently holds the position of Curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art at the Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA) and is the Artistic Director of AGSA’s nationally acclaimed Tarnanthi Festival. Cumpston is well known for her ambitious large-scale hand coloured photographs of the Murray-Darling River system, which has been directly impacted by climate crisis as well as decades of poor water management. Cumpston’s technique involves taking black and white photographs that she prints digitally to canvas, before working back into the images with hand colouring as a way of documenting traces of Indigenous occupation and drawing attention to the decline of the fragile river system.

VAULT spoke with Romance Was Born designers Anna Plunkett and Luke Sales about creating their Resort 2022 collection through the process of upcycling, and how a sustainability narrative seamlessly reinforces the brand’s enchanting theatricality.

One of the world’s most important art collecting dynasties has a clear forward focus on the environment, specifically our oceans. VAULT spoke to the woman at the helm, Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza.